Karangahape Road – Asia Pacific Report

‘Just lovely’: Karanga-a-Hape train station delights locals and visitors on open day

APR editor — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 06:53:44 +0000

By Lucy Xia of RNZ

Thousands have toured the metro City Rail Link’s deepest station — Karanga-a-Hape Station — ahead of its opening next month, and the station and its surrounds have come alive with music, performances and queues of people lining up to order food at St Kevin’s Arcade.

The event today drew in not just Aucklanders, but also visitors from other cities.

Karanga-a-Hape Station has New Zealand’s longest escalator, taking passengers 33 metres beneath Pitt Street.

READ MORE: Other City Rail Link reports

Other artistic features include a ceiling shaped like three kauri snail shells, in homage to the kauri forests that once covered the Karangahape ridgeline before urbanisation.

Thirteen-year-old Aizu Rive, who has visiting his Auckland grandparents — coming all the way from Tokyo — said he likes the architecture of the station, including the ceiling designs.

The young rail enthusiast said he was excited that New Zealand now had a metro network.

“Feels very nice, because New Zealand is getting bigger too, it’s getting similar with Japan so it feels very nice,” he said.

Train ‘getting bigger’
“The train is getting bigger in New Zealand, and I love trains, so it’s really good for me,” he added.

Mary Thompson, who’s come from Te Aroha in Waikato to visit the station, said opening of Auckland’s City Rail Link will make it easier for her to do day trips to Auckland.

“Coming up to Auckland, it’s always been a pain with parking, this, we just grab one [train] from Pukekohe, come through a day out, a good journey,” she said.

Thirteen-year-old rail enthusiast Aizu Rive, with his brother and grandparents . . . enjoying the Karanga-a-Hape Station open day today. Image: RNZ/Lucy Xia

Thompson said she was pleased with the art at the station.

“I just think you only have one chance to make it beautiful, nobody retrofits a building to put art in it, and the spaces are so pretty.

“I’m just happy it’s got brightness and light, and after living overseas, some of the stations are rather dingy and horrid, and this is just lovely,” she said.

Meanwhile, a family of four living on Vincent Street, near the Karanga-a-Hape Station said the CRL’s opening would make a big difference for their school drop offs.

New Zealand’s longest escalator going down 33 metres at the Karanga-a-hape Station in the new Auckland metro – the equivalent of a 10 storey building. Image: RNZ/Lucy Xia

Four bus trips a day
Arrenda Maryzona currently makes four bus trips a day to drop off and pick up her kids from their school in New Lynn.

With the new Karanga-a-Hape Station connected to the Western Line, she can now take the train directly to New Lynn and cut down her travel time by half.

“It will make my life easier, because I can commute easily and I can spend less time than now, I will be so happy,” she said.

The new inner-city rail network has cost $5.5 billion and taken a decade to build.

Auckland Transport says the CRL is expected to double the number of Aucklanders who live within a 30-minute train journey of the city centre.

City Rail Link opens on September 13.

This story was first published on

K Road Chronicles – looking at NZ’s homelessness from the inside

APR editor — Sat, 16 Jan 2021 23:00:43 +0000

K Road Chronicles video produced by Stuff with NZ On Air.

By RNZ’s The Weekend with Karyn Hay

The K Road Chronicles is a New Zealand webseries that delves into what it is like to be homeless on the streets of inner city Auckland.

Now in its second season, the show is hosted by Six – who knows the experience of homelessness firsthand, having lived on the streets for six years.

Six, an AUT journalism graduate and founder of the K Road Chronicle newspaper for homeless people, joins Karyn in the studio to discuss making the series.

By Jessie Chiang, RNZ News reporter

Living on the fringes
FLASHBACK TO 2017 REPORT: Homeless people and those living on the fringes in central Auckland have their own newspaper for the first time.

K Road Chronicle tells the stories of the Karangahape Road community.

The Chronicle’s editor, Six, said the monthly newspaper was about giving the homeless a voice and breaking down any prejudices the public may have about them.

“It educates the wider audience on who these people are and what they’re stories are and what’s significant to them,” she said.

Six, the editor of the K Road Chronicle, pictured on Karangahape Road. Image: Jessie Chiang/RNZ

“Even though it focuses mainly on K Road and stories from the street, it’s about everybody who uses the street whether they live there or work there.”

So far 1000 copies have been printed and are being given free to those sleeping rough to sell.

Six said just the other day she gave a few copies to someone on the street to sell and it was rewarding to see the difference it made.

“He sat up and he was excited to be giving out these newspapers and I think it gave him a purpose,” she said.

“I caught up with him a few hours later and I said, ‘how’s it going?’ and he said, ‘I made 20 bucks’ and that’s great because he could be sitting there all there and make five or 10 dollars.”

The paper was started with initial funding from the K Road Business Association. Image: Jessie Chiang/RNZ

Rob, who usually asks for money on K Road, has also been selling the Chronicle.

He said it was great to be able to offer people something that represented him as well as putting money in his pocket.

“They give me koha and before they read it, they ask me what it’s all about so I explain it to them,” he said.

“I say it’s all about the community and [it’s] ideas and thoughts.”

The newspaper was started with initial funding from the K Road Business Association.

“This publication really identifies the community and speaks to the community enhancement aspect of what we do,” said manager Michael Richardson. “It really speaks to what happens here at Karangahape Road.

Richardson said he was in talks with other organisations which were keen to donate funds to the newspaper.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.