Mind the Gap: April rail closures explained Mind the Gap: April rail closures explained
Date: 30 March 2026
Critical upgrade and testing work to enable the City Rail Link (CRL) to open as soon as possible, will be carried out while Auckland’s rail network is closed at Easter Weekend and a number of days during the school holidays.
To help deal with extra demand, Auckland Transport has arranged more than 100 replacement bus services to keep Aucklanders moving during these rail closures, including express options for Western and Southern line passengers. That’s nearly a 60% increase on what AT was able to secure during January’s closures.
Auckland Transport Director of Public Transport and Active Modes, Stacey van der Putten says the work and testing during rail closures are needed now to stay on track to open City Rail Link in the second half of this year.
“We know more people are turning to public transport as fuel prices rise. These works are on the critical path and delaying them now would result in delays completing City Rail Link work and ultimately opening the new services to Aucklanders,” Ms van der Putten says.
“Providing a full range of bus alternatives and doing the work during school holidays when we impact fewer people is the best way we can deliver without delay while minimising the disruption to passengers.”
The closures will see KiwiRail and Auckland Transport work on a range of upgrades to allow City Rail Link to open with a better and more reliable Auckland rail network. They include works at Henderson station, three new station bridges to replace level crossings, train signalling improvements, track renewals and replacements, infrastructure upgrades, work on three new Drury stations and three days testing the new Auckland-wide City Rail Link timetable.
When the City Rail Link opens in the second half of the year, Auckland’s train network will change significantly. A new timetable will introduce three new train lines, East West, South City and Onehunga West, along with three new city stations, creating more frequent, better connections across the region.
What is happening during CRL testing?
To introduce this reliably network-wide testing will take place 13-15 April.
“Our priority when opening City Rail Link is to provide reliable services. So, consistent with international practise and lessons learned from overseas rail projects, we're planning a staged approach to introducing higher frequencies for the new services,” says van der Putten.
“We will open City Rail Link with a temporary transitional timetable to help customers and our staff get used to the changes. We will test both this temporary timetable and the higher frequency peak train services that we plan to ramp up to within about six months.”
“April’s testing will help us confirm what the temporary transitional timetable will look like and how long it is likely to be in place for.”
Testing covers everything from train positioning, scheduling, and rostering to real time passenger information on trains, at stations and on our mobile apps. Coordinating trains across 45 stations to a brand-new timetable, with accuracy measured in seconds, is a really complex task.
Dry runs allow rail controllers, drivers and operators to practise managing a much busier network with new train lines and more passenger, freight and inter-regional trains sharing the same tracks.
Bus services to replace trains
We know buses and trains are busier than usual, so a full complement of replacement bus services will be available to keep people moving during all rail closures, including express options for Western and Southern line passengers.
We will also have buses on standby ready to be deployed where more capacity is needed when scheduled rail buses get full.
People can also use local regularly scheduled bus services which run at least every 15 minutes 7am till 7pm.
The majority of the rail replacement buses will be fitted with GPS tracking, allowing customers to see when the next bus will be arriving at the rail station via the AT mobile App.
We encourage people to use the AT Journey Planner ahead of travel to check out the rail bus timetable.
The full rail network will be closed for passenger services on the following dates:
April 3 - 6 (Easter Weekend)
April 13 – 15 (Weekday closures for CRL timetable testing)
April 25 – 27 (ANZAC Day weekend closure – trains will run until 2pm on Saturday 25 April to allow people to attend memorial services, following this there will be a full rail network closure until Tuesday 28 April 2026.)
There will also be a number of partial and full line closures throughout the school holidays. The schedule can be found here.
Safety during CRL testing
A reminder that even though passenger trains will be unavailable, trains will still be travelling across the train network and through road and pedestrian level crossings.
For your safety, always stop to check both ways for trains before crossing the tracks. Stay alert to stay safe.