201410 – Wood – Introduction to Auckland’s Rail System and Upgrading Projects

This paper provides an overview of the current physical configuration and institutional arrangements for the Auckland Rail system in order to provide an introduction and context for the subsequent technical papers at the Electric Rail – Building Auckland’s Future conference.

In addition, the history of passenger rail services in Auckland during the past half century is recapped with a focus on the key decisions and events in the past decade that led to the much debated and long awaited decision in 2007 to electrify the Auckland network and to purchase new electric trains to operate passenger services between Swanson and Papakura.

The paper concludes with an overview of the key milestones of KiwiRail’s Auckland Electrification Project and the parallel Auckland Transport Electric Multiple Unit and Maintenance depot projects, together with an outline of some of the future projects under consideration for the Auckland Network.