“The track issue occurred at about 7.30am and initially resulted in the suspension of just the Eastern Line,” Inger said.
“It was fixed by KiwiRail just before 10am, however, Auckland One Rail train crews were displaced as a result of the disruption and their unionised staff are not working any altered plans outside of their master roster.
“This means Auckland One Rail were unable to provide any train services from about 10.30am.”
Inger said while services had started to resume, some delays and cancellations are still expected.
“Industrial action is ongoing and there may be some further cancellations throughout the afternoon and into the evening. ‘Live departures’ and ‘journey planner’ will be kept up to date with the latest information on what services are operating.
“We appreciate this disruption is extremely frustrating for our customers and want a resolution to this industrial action as quickly as possible.”
An AT spokesman had said the fault occurred near Middlemore at about 7.30am. Afterwards, AT warned of “significant delays” for commuters.
“The Eastern Line has been suspended temporarily and further disruption is expected across all train lines due to crew displacement [as a result of delays/cancellations this morning] and ongoing industrial action,” said the spokesman this morning.
Two rail buses replaced trains on the Eastern line and another two had bolstered Southern line trains to provide an alternative means of transport while services were disrupted and KiwiRail worked to resolve the issue.
Those needing to use public transport were directed to use the journey planner to find scheduled bus services, he said.
AT’s website showed that the fault was causing delays and cancellations on the Southern and Western lines.
Queues of passengers started to file out of Newmarket station after being caught up in the unexpected disruption.
KiwiRail said the track issue was a “points failure”, referring to the mechanism that switches trains between different tracks. A spokesman said the points have been fixed.
Today’s delay was another disruption for Auckland public transport commuters.
Last Monday, trains were reduced to 20-minute frequencies when unionised workers refused to work overtime or altered rostered hours as part of their industrial action.
“Auckland One Rail has been in collective bargaining with the Rail and Maritime [Transport] Union of New Zealand and we are disappointed that it has come to industrial action, impacting many of our customers,” Inger said.
