A reminder that City Rail Link (CRL) timetable testing will continue for the rest of today and all day tomorrow.

People will see trains running as part of the testing, but there are no services available to passengers until Thursday morning.

Rail replacement buses are running on a 10-minute frequency during peak times. We are aware there were some delays for passengers boarding buses this morning, and we expect them to be very busy during this evening and again at peak times tomorrow.

Auckland Transport is encouraging people to use regular bus services or travel outside peak hours to help ease the pressure.

Customer Service teams wearing pink vests can help to get you where you're going or use our AT Journey Planner tool to help find a bus route near you.

The timetable testing is an important milestone on the journey to opening the CRL later this year. A huge amount of planning alongside KiwiRail, City Rail Link limited and our rail operator Auckland One Rail has gone into the testing.

Over the course of the day, more than 280 train drivers and train managers will be out on the network as we put the new timetable through its paces.

Stacey Van Der Putten, Auckland Transport Director of Public Transport and Active Modes says the testing is going well.

"As you would expect when you go from modelling to real-life testing, there are a few issues which are popping up, some we anticipated and some we didn't such as small delays in getting 84 trains out of the depot and running across the network at once.

So there are a few things to iron out, but nothing that has given us any major cause for concern at the moment.

We are doing the testing, so we can find and fix issues now, before the CRL opens and we switch to a new network later this year. We’ll be running trains more often, on new routes that connect through the city centre, and we want these services to be reliable from Day 1. It's also a great opportunity for train crews to get more familiar with how the network will change."

We would like to thank the public for their patience and support. We are building a world-class train network and it's important we test and test again so we can deliver safe and reliable journeys right from the very first day.

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