VINCI Construction wins a Design-Construction contract for the City Rail Link Rail Project in Auckland, New Zealand

The Link Alliance, which includes VINCI Construction subsidiaries VINCI Construction Grands Projets (main contractor) and Soletanche Bachy International, along with their New Zealand partner Downer and designers Aecom, WSP-Opus, and Tonkin & Taylor, has today signed the Design-Construction Alliance contract for Package 3 of the City Rail Link project in New Zealand.

The contract, worth 1,658 million New Zealand dollars or approximately 970 million euros, is for the design and construction of 3.45 km of extension of a train line, including 3.2 km of tunnel, to link the existing Britomart station to the existing Mount Eden station. Along that line, three new stations will be built, two of which are underground. The tunnels will be made using an earth pressure tunnel boring machine with a diameter of 7.18 m.

The signed contract is an “Alliance” type, meaning the designer-constructor consortium and the client, City Rail Link Limited can create a single, integrated team to deliver the project to Auckland residents in 2024.

For a total cost of 4.419 billion New Zealand dollars, or 2.586 billion euros, the City Rail Link project is expected to double the number of people who can reach downtown Auckland in under 30 minutes. This new train line has been designed to accommodate 54,000 passengers per hour at peak travel times, which is the equivalent of two double four-lane motorways.

With this contract, VINCI Construction once again demonstrates its ability to support urban centres in designing and constructing large urban mobility and public transport projects, as it does in France, Hong Kong, Singapore, Doha, and, more recently, Virginia (USA), and Ottawa (Canada), with the design-construction contract for the LRT.