Travel for thousands of Aucklanders was disrupted this morning due to a fault with KiwiRail’s overhead powerlines at Grafton which led to the cancellation of services on the passenger network.
Auckland Transport (AT) group manager, metro services, Darek Koper said: “This morning a significant fault with KiwiRail’s overhead power lines at Grafton has forced our rail team to cancel services across Auckland’s passenger rail network.
“We are advised KiwiRail will fix this issue in the next hour or two but unfortunately there will still be flow-on cancellations and delays all morning as a result of the enormous disruption to our services so far.
“Tens of thousands of Aucklanders rely on our rail network every day to get to school, work and to access essential services. It hugely disappointing and frustrating that we are not able to operate our services as usual this morning.
“Because of the short notice of this outage our teams have only been able to arrange for a small number of rail replacement buses, so we’re encouraging our train customers to consider using one of our scheduled bus services instead this morning.
“Once power has been restored today and our trains are up and running we will be seeking more detailed answers from KiwiRail about the cause of this morning’s outage and what steps they will take to prevent such issues happening again in future.”
Cancellations this morning included all services on the Western and Onehunga lines because there was no power along those lines due to the power issue at Grafton. Only one rail replacement bus was sourced for each of those lines.
Services on the Southern and Eastern lines are running as far as Otahuhu, with a limited number of rail replacement buses operating between Otahuhu and Britomart. Rail Replacement buses on the Eastern Line due to KiwiRail’s Rail Network Rebuild closure are operating as normal today.
AT issued an update on the situation at 9.30am, saying train services were running on the Southern, Western and Eastern Lines after the power outage was resolved.
Services were running to 20 minute frequencies for the remainder of the morning peak instead of the usual 10 minute frequency.
AT did not yet have a timeframe for services resuming on the Onehunga Line and would keep customers updated on progress restoring services through its usual communication channels.
It’s running a rail replacement bus on the Onehunga Line while trains are not able to operate. Customers can also catch a range of scheduled bus services including the 30, which runs frequently between Onehunga and the City Centre.
AT is meeting with senior KiwiRail executives this afternoon to discuss this issue.
