For Auckland’s City Rail Link project, defining property plans below ground level has been an interesting challenge.
Auckland’s underground City Rail Link system began passenger services on 13 September, marking the culmination of years of planning and construction for the NZ$5.5 billion project.
The undertaking has involved the building of 3.45 kilometres of twin rail tunnels beneath central Auckland, as well as the construction of two new underground stations and the redevelopment of two other stations.
Engineering and surveying company CKL became involved in City Rail Link following its work on Auckland’s Waterview Connection, where its team developed valuable experience in the specialist land legalisation work required when major infrastructure passes beneath existing properties.
That expertise has played an important, if largely unseen, role in City Rail Link.
“The majority of our work has been to create the new parcels for the tunnel as they pass under private property,” said CKL Survey Manager, Simon Reid, who has worked for more than 10 years on the City Rail Link project.
In practice, that means defining the space required for the railway in three dimensions, establishing boundaries both horizontally and vertically — effectively creating legal ‘boxes’ around the underground infrastructure and representing them within the two-dimensional Land Information New Zealand (LINZ) Landonline system.
To date, CKL has lodged and gained approval for 30 survey plans across the 14 property project zones, alongside specialist work involving unit title developments where the tunnels pass beneath common property.
As the project has progressed, CKL’s work has expanded to include land beneath public roads and around the new station precincts, where road, rail and other property interests need to be clearly defined and separated.
Representing complexity
While the physical railway is now operating, CKL is continuing to prepare and progress survey plans through LINZ, helping to establish the legal framework that will sit around the infrastructure for decades to come.
The 14 defined property project zones involve different combinations of land ownership, boundaries and vertical levels.
Reid says one of the challenges has been finding ways to represent that complexity on survey plans that can be readily understood not only by surveyors, but by the many other stakeholders involved.
“There would only be a handful of surveyors across the country who would have done something like this, if that,” he said.
Consistency has also been critical. Reid has remained involved throughout CKL’s time on the project, providing continuity and institutional knowledge as the project itself — and the people and organisations involved — have changed around it.
That long involvement has also enabled CKL to work closely with LINZ to establish a consistent approach to checking and approving some of the project’s more unusual survey plans.
Today, the focus is increasingly on the areas surrounding the completed stations, as the final land and ownership arrangements are worked through.
CKL’s work on the project is expected to continue for another 12 to 18 months as final land and ownership arrangements are agreed and the remaining survey plans progress through approval and lodgement.
