The electrification and resignalling of the Auckland urban rail network won a prestigious Australasian award.
KiwiRail Head of signals and telecommunications John Skilton accepted the Railway Technical Society of Australasia’s joint 2016 Biennial rail project award in Melbourne on May 18 on behalf of KiwiRail, Siemens, and Hilor.
The electrification involved installing 80km of electrified rail, 3500 masts and portals, six substations, 154 new signals huts, 382 new signals and 235 new point machines on the Auckland network.
“The electrification project allowed the purchase and use of modern electric units to replace aging diesel-hauled trains,” says KiwiRail CEO Peter Reidy says.
“Without it, it is likely that thousands of more car trips would be being made every week in an already congested city,” says Reidy.
In the early 1990s, passenger trips in Auckland were barely averaging 1 million a year on the city’s trains. There were still fewer than 3 million trips a year before Britomart opened downtown in 2003.
More than 11 million train trips had happened before electrification completed in late 2014, and there are now more than 16 million passenger journeys a year, with Auckland Transport predicting 20 million a year in 2017.
The RTSA award judging panel said the project stood out because of its role in transforming public transport in New Zealand’s largest city.
The panel was particularly impressed by its use of innovative technology including the first operational use in the Southern Hemisphere of European Train Control System automatic train protection technology.
Skilton thanked the Government and Auckland Transport for their foresight and backing of the project which had enabled an average 20% increase in train patronage in Auckland for each of the past two years.
The RTSA award was shared jointly with Australian miner Roy Hill for its hi-tech 334km railway that shifts iron ore to the coast from the company’s Western Australia mine.
Trains are loaded at the pit using a state-of-the-art loading system run by remote control from Perth.
