Near miss with train interrupts Greens' level crossing announcement
Mon, 5th Oct 2026 (Today)
The Greens have announced plans to fund the removal of level crossings along Auckland's Western line.
They argue this prioritises safety for pedestrians, cyclists and vehicles which have faced just under 70 crashes, and hundreds of near misses in Auckland between 2013 and 2023.
Announcing the policy at the Morningside level crossing on Monday, co-leaders Chlöe Swarbrick and Marama Davidson and Mt Albert candidate Ricardo Menéndez March witnessed something of a near miss themselves.
Swarbrick turned back to look and pointed, saying "Did you see that? Somebody just driving across the crossing as the train was coming.
"That is case in point of why we need to remove these level crossings ... that's incredibly, incredibly dangerous and was one of those very near misses."
The work was not currently funded, but the Greens policy said the estimated $2.5 billion would come out of the National Land Transport Fund.
The projects would also enable more than 12 trains an hour on the Western Line, and allow the CRL to run at its full capacity of 48 trains an hour, and reduce congestion with barriers currently down about 30 percent of the time during peak traffic.
"These are the improvements that will take our communities and our economy into the future," Davidson said.
"This isn't just about connectivity and safety, it's just straight up common sense when it comes to unblocking congestion in Auckland which we know costs us billions of dollars in productivity ... and stress it costs Aucklanders."
Swarbrick said she had spoken to Auckland mayor Wayne Brown as recently as earlier in the morning and the level crossing funding was "just the most productive investments that we could possibly be making in our transport infrastructure" and should have been included in the Auckland regional deal.
She said that contrasted "quite strongly with the supposed investments - or the setting of money on fire - as announced by the National Party with their roads of National Party significance projects".
Labour's Infrastructure spokesperson Kieran McAnulty earlier criticised political parties making announcements about funding specific infrastructure projects, saying the Infrastructure Commission should be doing that work.
Swarbrick said the Greens' transport policy set out plans to run all proposals through the Commission's assurance process, and said the level crossings funding was "quite markedly different from the National Party pushing ahead with their dogmatic ideological pursuit of roads, roads, roads, more lanes and more lanes".
Asked if the Greens could convince Labour that fuel taxes needed to rise, she said the co-leaders were meeting formally with Labour leader Chris Hipkins monthly and had discussed it - and if New Zealanders felt strongly about it they could vote
