If there’s one planning rule that does more damage to public transport than any other, it is minimum parking requirements. These are the District Plan Rules that state something along the lines of “for every residential unit there must be at least two off-street parking spaces provided”, or “for every 40 square metres of office space, there must be at least one parking space provided”. These rules infest our District Plans everywhere, with the one exception being Auckland’s Central Area District Plan, where thankfully common sense has prevailed that the CBD would rather suck if filled up with parking garages. Here’s a classic example, from the Isthmus Section of the Auckland City Council District Plan: Obviously there is a reason why councils have minimum parking requirements in their District Plans, and that is to ensure that the roads don’t get clogged up with people looking for a parking space. However, what minimum parking requirements actually do is provide an enormous hidden subsidy for those who choose to drive, compared to those who choose to use public transport, or walk, or cycle. There are ways in which on-street parking could be controlled – through the use of designating particular areas for short-term parking, or operating residents-only parking permit schemes. I mean, Parnell and Ponsonby seem to get away just fine without enormous amounts of off-street parking. People might even choose to take the bus instead of the hassle of trying to find a parking spot.
But what makes minimum parking requirements really really bad is how they are, effectively, a giant subsidy for car users. Let’s take the example of a shopping centre, say Westfield Albany (as it has acres and acres of parking). All the land which is used for parking is valuable and expensive land, especially in a future town centre like Albany. The cost of providing each parking space varies, but is often considered to be around $30,000 – multiply that by the few thousand spaces that your average mall provides and we start to see some really really big amounts of money being dedicated to the provision of parking. If it wasn’t required to be used for parking, the land could be turned into other buildings – which as well as being more economically productive would also create a place which looked far nicer (I’m yet to come across anyone who likes the look of a parking lot). But anyway, because the land for each carpark is valuable, and generally outside the CBD people don’t pay for their parking directly, the mall owners need to make back that money somehow.
Of course, there’s only one way for Westfield (or any other shop that has to provide parking) to make that money back, and that’s to charge a higher rent than they would otherwise have to. And there’s only one way for the shop owners to make back that money, and that’s to charge higher prices. When you buy your $10 lunch at a mall, perhaps 50c of that’s paying for your parking – whether or not you drove to the mall. While most people currently do drive to malls (well you’re paying for the privilege anyway, public transport to them is often rubbish at weekends, so no surprises there) having specific planning rules that reinforce this auto-dependency and potentially force mall-owners to provide excess parking seems a bit daft, to put it mildly.
What really annoys me though, and it’s the case with a lot of planning rules, is the assumption that the more parking spaces that are provided, the better the outcome is. We have a minimum level of provision, but no maximum – giving off the impression that more is better. Just like other daft planning rules where we have minimum setbacks from the road for dwellings – with the assumption that the further the dwelling is back from the road the better the outcome is (never mind that most European cities build right up to the street creating a vibrant urban environment). Or minimum lot sizes, with the assumption that the lower the density we have, the better it must be (usually at the same time District Plans have great introductions talking about the scourge of urban sprawl – hypocrisy anyone?) Clearly, minimum parking requirements are useful to nobody but traffic engineers.
Here’s an extract from the abstract to a very well put together research paper into the negative effects of minimum parking requirements – the article as a whole makes for quite compelling reading:
District plans continue to mandate the provision of vast amounts of parking for most new developments. Parking standards are based on the demand for free parking at the peak hour of each individual site, which creates an oversupply and fails to recognise the value of land used for car parks. This approach reduces the supply and thus drives up the price of urban land available for economically productive uses (residential, commercial and retail) and distributes the costs throughout the economy. Minimum parking standards undermine sustainable city development by inhibiting compact growth and subsidising single-occupant vehicle trips.
The solution seems obvious – let the developer decide. In some cases a developer may wish to invest in a large parking area, because it’s worthwhile for them to do so. In other cases, they might do the sums and work out it makes more sense for them to promote public transport as a way of getting people to their shop/mall/whatever. If good public transport is already provided why should they be forced to provide unnecessary parking spaces that are expensive and generally pretty ugly? Similarly for residential developments, if a developer is working on a block of apartments that will mainly be aimed towards pensioners, why the heck do they need to provide two spaces per unit? The forced over-provision of parking spaces might add a few thousand to the cost of each apartment, either putting it out of reach of someone looking to buy it, or cutting into the business case of the proposal going ahead in the first place.
To end, here’s an excellent video put together on the issue.
Let’s hope that when the future Super City formulates its new District Plan, that common sense prevails and we give minimum parking requirements the boot.
There has been a flurry of activity since a post I made last week called for information on why the heck it’s taking so long to find out how the electric trains for Auckland’s rail system will be funded. Perhaps it’s a coincidence that the ARC finally got around to making a press release on the matter the day after I made that post, or perhaps after reading my post they went “crikey we’d almost forgotten about that!” In some ways, I do hope it was a coincidence.
In response to this long-overdue questioning of Steven Joyce about when we’re going to finally get the electric train funding announced, we’re starting to hear some rather worrying stories emerging through the various channels that news reporters go to for information on such matters. Firstly, a Herald article on Friday stated the following response from a spokeswoman for Mr Joyce:
But a spokeswoman for Mr Joyce said: “There is a process going on with officials that Mr Lee is well aware of.
“It involves finalising the governance of metro rail, including in Auckland, finalising the scope of the project, and funding.
“Recommendations on all those issues are expected shortly.”
Finalising the scope of the project? Surely that had already been finalised in terms of the whole system between Swanson and Papakura being electrified? Or are we talking about the scope of the electric trains purchase – in terms of the number of trains being purchased and how the purchase will be structured?
Another article today, by Brian Rudman, indicates that the answer to the question above might well be “both”, and that it all looks like pretty bad news. Some exerpts:
Reports now leaking out of Wellington paint a dispiriting picture of the alternatives being considered.
They suggest that far from being driven by a desire to create a first-world rapid-rail system such as any other city city of a similar size enjoys, the major driving force for this minister is a desire to meet the deadline as cheaply and Third Worldly as he can get away with…
…Industry sources suggest the Government now wants to almost halve the size of the new rail fleet to 75 and to make up the difference by collecting up all the second-hand electric locomotives that can be found around the country, giving them a lick of paint and an oil change, and pressing them into service dragging Auckland’s existing fleet of tarted-up old carriages.
Apparently a stockpile of retired electric locomotives in Palmerston North is being eyed up.
As well, some main trunk freight locomotives will become surplus to requirements, once the recently ordered fleet of 20 new freight locomotives arrives from China.
One report suggests more carriages may have to be bought.
Instead of the trains being short and swift and new, they will, because of the heavy freight locomotives pulling them, be long and slow to accelerate.
Another worry is the possibility that to save more money, the resurrected Onehunga branch line will not be electrified – a diesel shuttle will run back and forth instead – and the planned Parnell station will be shelved.
This really is depressing news. The point of electrification is to bring Auckland’s rail system into the 21st century, to provide new trains that will be able to operate on the system for the next 30-40 years without the enormous maintenance bill that currently cripples the system’s viability, to offer users something of a high enough quality to truly attract people out of their cars and onto public transport. The point was not to find the cheapest possible option, because (of course) that wouldn’t actually result in the aforementioned goals being achieved.
So, I guess the question is ‘why are we being screwed over here?’ Apart from the obvious reason that the government doesn’t see any value in rail and only perceives it as a blackhole for funding, I actually think there’s a worry within government that if a good rail system was provided, people would actually use it. And they’re quite aware of the capacity constraints of Britomart, and don’t want to have to stump up $1.5 billion for the CBD Rail Tunnel any time soon. So it makes sense to do a “bare minimum” upgrade, to keep people from shifting to public transport “too fast” (the concept of having a mode-shift to public transport too quickly is specifically mentioned in the government policy statement on transport as being a negative). I guess if people shifted to using the rail system in their droves it would also make it harder to justify spending billions upon billions of dollars on new state highways. David Bennett, National MP for Hamilton, recently opposed the proposed Waikato Rail Service on the ground that it might divert attention away from the Waikato Expressway – basically saying he was worried it might be a success and reduce the need for his pet project.
There are plenty of reasons why the government would want to ruin electrification. However, they’re all unacceptable and it’s time they were called on it.
Well I finally got the opportunity to get out of Auckland for the weekend, and went up to my parents’ beach house at Mangawhai Heads with Leila (girlfriend) and Amalia (daughter). It was a pleasant weekend, which also involved a couple of trips along the Orewa-Puhoi Motorway, which was opened in January this year. I had been on the motorway once before, back in January on the weekend when it very first opened, but only heading southwards (as the motorway wasn’t yet open when we’d headed up on the Friday).
As the first weekend of the motorway being open had also been declared “toll-free”, this weekend was also my first experience of the tolling system. I made what was probably a mistake in queuing up to pay manually at the BP Station near Silverdale – and got stuck behind either a bunch of idiots or a group of poor suffering people being confused endlessly by the system of paying… I’m still not quite sure which, as I found it easy enough to use. In any case, fortunately Leila took a reasonable number of photos of the route, which are included below:These are the cameras that take a photo of your car’s license plate as you drive through the “electronic toll gate”. It’s pretty clever stuff as you don’t need to stop for a toll gate (although all the queuing to pay means that much of the time saved through the shorter route could be lost).
This is quite a good long-distance view of a part of the route. One of the “eco-viaducts” is shown, while “Pukeko Bridge” is visible in the distance. I’m pretty sure that bridge isn’t a public road, but instead only allows one side of a farmer’s property to link with the other side. It’s definitely pretty narrow.
Another photo a bit further along the road. One thing that really stood out for me was how barren the general area that the motorway runs through is. I know that a LOT of plants have been planted, and that over time things will regenerate, but I must say that at the moment the view from the road is almost a bit of a moonscape in its barren-ness.
This is the cut through “Chin Hill”, which apparently is one of the biggest ever cuts made into a hill anywhere in the country. I can’t say I see that as much of an achievement, as the landscape of the area is pretty heavily modified by the cut. Perhaps a tunnel could have been an option here too?
This photo looks towards the Waiwera Viaduct and the Johnstone’s Hill Tunnels in the distance. The viaduct is 537m long and up to 31m above the estuary, but to be honest when driving over it you hardly notice what’s beneath you. I’m yet to decide whether this is a good thing or a bad thing.
This is from inside the Johnston’s Hill tunnel (southbound actually, the northbound photos turned out pretty rubbish). The tunnel is certainly pretty cool, although it’s all over quite quickly which in some ways feels like a bit of a shame.
Overall, obviously the road is a triumph of engineering to make a pretty easy-to-drive road go through some pretty harsh terrain. However, if I’m honest I would say that it actually feels too easy, too over-engineered in some ways. Like in the battle between nature and humanity we have won through a complete knockout punch and then stood there pounding the losing nature to death repeatedly. Sure, there has been good environmental mitigation in the form of the eco-viaducts and the tunnel, but the way it’s just so smooth and easy to drive, the enormous amount of earthworks that went on to cut through places link Chin Hill and to fill other places, it just somehow feels a bit wrong. A bit surreal – although perhaps over time as I drive the route more often I’ll get used to it.
I must admit I am somewhat confused at the moment with regards to the outcomes of the Regional Transport Committee’s seemingly very important meeting earlier this week. As I detailed in yesterday’s post the future of Auckland’s rail system over the next 30 years is being discussed quite vigorously at the moment, including all the kinds of lines that I go on about over and over again in various posts on this blog. While that’s very positive in many respects – we might actually have them being promoted in an important regional document with a serious timeframe for getting them done – there are still some things that I’m finding a bit strange.
The most significant one is the relative priorities that the ARC are giving to the Airport Line and the CBD Rail Tunnel. My reading of the transport committee’s analysis was that all future extensions to the rail network, such as a North Shore Line, the Avondale-Onehunga Line, the airport line and whatever else ends up being built assumed that the CBD Rail Tunnel would be built. This makes sense to me – that there’s no point constructing an Airport Line when Britomart won’t have the available capacity to actually handle trains entering or leaving the station. The last thing we would want to have to do is make Airport Line passengers (and all their luggage) transfer at Newmarket onto already crowded Southern and Western Line trains.
Now while I’ve interpreted “the plan” as promoting the CBD Rail Tunnel for construction before the Airport Line, Jon Coltrain at Auckland Trains has analysed things rather differently in a couple of different posts he’s made this week. This is what his post today says:
But the CDB loop which is not top of the officials list despite assuming it’s necessary and so will happen is being argued to increase the vitality of businesses – something the local business people are working hard on including their awful misguided recent ad campaign and their so far successful bid to lure more prestigious shops into the downtown area.
The officials comparison in their computer projections of rail demands with and without a CBD rail loop indicated the loop system would increase rail and ferry patronage by 23% from 93,000 to 125,000 users during the morning, interpeak and afternoon peak periods.
But they say other proposed rail services such as the airport link will increase by a much more impressive 70%.
So they have concluded that , while it would alleviate the terminal constraints and allow for increased services, the loop will NOT on its own maximise rail use – their jargon for increase rail patronage.
While Britomart was having its typical afternoon rush hour hiccups (electronic signs not working, platform confusion, some southern line delays) officials were making important decisions on what should be the city’s rail priorities in the next ten years.
And rapid rail to Auckland airport was getting the most favoured consideration at this afternoon’s Auckland Regional Council’s regional transport committee. The airport connections and Avondale-Southdown route are now considered the best bang for the buck – attracting the highest levels of patronage relative to their expected cost.
One interesting gem that was reported in passing related to what government funds would be expected. It was estimated that Government funding for what would be KiwiRail’s rail infrastructure activities in the order of $1.2b would be provided over the 10 year old period 2009-219. “Assuming a similiar level of funding over the following 20 year years, this suggests funding in the order of $3.6b over the 30 years 2009/10 to 20039/40.” It’s not clear if this is inside information of what the government will be allocating and announcing but it’s good to see a figure given.
Passenger transport network improvements up to 2041 getting the “preferred strategic option” treatment are commuter rail for the Onehunga and Manukau branch lines, the CBD rail loop, the Avondale- Onehunga line and airport connections north and Puhinui.
Jon is very well informed about what the goings on are in Auckland’s rail system, so perhaps he has read into this more than me. If so, then it is worrying to see the Regional Council not supporting the CBD Rail Tunnel 100%. While the Airport Line might attract more new users of the rail system than the CBD Rail Tunnel, there’s not much point in attracting all these users if you simply can’t get them in and out of our main train station. Furthermore, the current system’s capacity is likely to max out at about 16 million passengers a year by 2016 without the CBD Rail Tunnel, while the tunnel would allow the system’s capacity to be increased to around 50 million a year. With that sort of capacity you could easily add an Airport Line and a Howick/Botany Line.
While technically Britomart is not yet at capacity, and trackworks will increase its capacity from 18 trains per hour to 24 trains per hour (in and out) from later this year, regular users of the system often tell of stories where trains get stacked up outside the Britomart tunnel during peak hour, waiting their turn to enter the station – basically waiting for another train to pass through the “throat” of where the two track tunnel meets the five tracks that lead to the platform. If that’s a problem now – when we’re barely running a train every 15 minutes on the three main lines – imagine how things are going to be when we’re running trains on those lines every 10 minutes, plus a couple of trains from Onehunga, plus at least one from Hamilton, PLUS potentially four trains an hour from the airport.
It seems impossible, and a recipe for disaster. So, in my (well considered I hope) opinion, clearly the CBD Rail Tunnel has to come first. So come on ARC, without your full support there’s no chance of the project ever getting central government funding.
These three videos have been around for a while now, as they were made back in 2006. However, I think it is certainly worthwhile for me to share them (now that I have got the hang of embedding videos!) They played a big role in making me determined to do whatever I can to improve Auckland’s public transport system and reduce our auto-dependence.
The Auckland Regional Council’s Regional Transport Committee has spent most of this year working on developing the 2010 Regional Land Transport Strategy. That strategy now has a full draft, which along with some background information on the analysis of what future public transport projects make the most economic sense, certainly does make for interesting reading.
A lot of the Regional Land Transport Strategy is very much “policy-speak”, with targets and goals and aims and so on. While I understand that kind of stuff is always important, it doesn’t really interest me particularly much. What I find myself more interested in is looking at what projects are proposed, and when they are likely to happen. In particular, I suppose that I find myself most interested in the expansion of Auckland’s rail network – hopefully eventually turning it into something half-decent (world-class is probably a bit much to ever hope for).
As I’ve previously mentioned on many occasions, there are a number of possible rail system extensions for Auckland:
CBD Rail Tunnel
Airport Line
Avondale-Southdown Line
Howick/Botany Line
North Shore Line
The latest information from the thinking behind the Regional Land Transport Strategy looks at all these potential extensions to the rail network. I’ll work through what is said about each one in turn.
With regards to the CBD Rail Tunnel, the RLTS correctly realises that all future extensions to the rail network are reliant upon the project happening. Therefore, for all the options is it assumed that the CBD Rail Tunnel will be happening. Which is excellent news.
So the need for the CBD Rail Tunnel is pretty obvious. Overall it appears to provide for at least a doubling of capacity along most of the existing railway lines. As I’ve often said, the most significant reason to build the CBD Rail Tunnel is because otherwise the system’s capacity will max out at about 2016.
The proposal doesn’t look too deeply into the airport line, but the rather low patronage estimates for the line for some reason are said to exclude air passengers. Once air passengers are included, patronage doubles and is considered to be sufficient for making the project justifiable:
What’s of most concern is the “Mangere Bridge” number of trips, which does seem pretty low. However, as I said that excludes air passengers, which is further analysed:
Adding 2,500 air passengers to the almost 2,000 passengers from non-traveller sources gives us around 4,500 passengers during the peak period for the airport line. This seems to be about the level that is considered justifiable.
Moving on to the Avondale-Southdown Line, which is being called the Avondale-Onehunga line for the purposes of this study, we see the following: This is certainly an interesting potential railway line, as unlike most successful lines it wouldn’t actually pass through the CBD at all. I have generally thought that this line wouldn’t work unless it was linked into some significant “greater isthmus circle line” of sorts, taking in the Eastern Line and the inner part of the Western Line. I guess that Auckland’s employment patterns being so dispersed would assist in this line potentially becoming a success. I imagine services are most likely to run between Henderson and Manukau City, via this line and the airport line. If that was the case then I think the patronage is realistic.
Next, the analysis looks at what I call the Howick/Botany Line, but what is called here the Panmure-Botany RTN/QTN, which is analysed below: This is one situations where I strongly disagree with the findings. For a start, I think the lower patronage is probably at least somewhat due to the route that is proposed for this line – not far north of Ti Rakau Drive. This means that the significant potential residential catchments of Highland Park, Bucklands Beach (via feeder bus) and Howick (via feeder bus) are excluded in favour of a route that largely runs through industrial land – at least between Botany and Pakuranga. Secondly, the big problem with having a bus-based solution is simply “what does one do with all these buses once they reach Panmure?” There is no obvious bus link between Panmure and the city at the moment, and there is no real way of building an “RTN standard” (busway) link between the two places, unless we revived the Eastern Motorway. Which I really don’t think we want to do. So in this case I will disagree with what the Regional Transport Committee are promoting, and continue to suggest that a rail based solution out east is definitely the best choice.
Lastly, we come to a future North Shore railway line:
I’m not quite sure whether I buy the whole “turning it into a railway line would reduce patronage” argument. Yes, sure it would mean that people have to transfer, but if trains are coming every 5 minutes then I don’t see that as much of a problem. It would effectively mean an average wait of 2 and a half minutes for the train. So therefore, if the train journey was any more than two and a half minutes faster than the bus trip over the same distance, the whole trip would actually end up being, on average, quicker. Surely that, along with the higher quality ride one gets on a train, would actually increase patronage?
In any case, my opinion towards turning the Northern Busway into a railway line has generally been that it’s a good idea in the long run, but in the meanwhile the busway works pretty well and there are other more important projects out there. However, as is stated above, in the long run it might be necessary to undertake this project if the busway reaches capacity. A heavy rail line can have much higher capacity limits than a busway.
So overall, what are my thoughts on this? Well, I must say I’m not quite as excited by it all as I thought I would be. While I’m glad that all the potential lines have been raised and analysed, I think that the priorities assigned to these projects aren’t quite right. I don’t see the Avondale-Onehunga Line as a higher priority than the Howick/Botany Line. I also don’t think it’s a wide idea to go for a bus solution out east. Nevertheless, it is great to have this information available and it’s good to know that there is at least a plan being worked towards that could lead to these important projects actually happening. Some of the more crazier ideas about a Metro system for Auckland have been thrown out, but in a way that’s probably a good thing as we don’t want them to distract from the projects that would actually work and are actually necessary.
It’ll be interesting to see how things evolve further.
Back in March when the government cancelled the Regional Fuel Tax that was going to pay for Auckland’s rail electrification, Steven Joyce affirmed the government’s commitment to paying for electrification in other ways. Initially it seemed like the whole country was going to pick up the bill via a 6c a litre tax, although subsequently we’ve realised that this tax will be going to Steven Joyce’s pet roads of National significance, rather than being spent on rail. This left a big question as to how electrification would be funded.
In May, half of this question was answered, with $663 million set aside in the budget for “the renewal, upgrade and electrification of the Auckland metropolitan rail network”, to be spent between 2009 and 2013. So this covered the “below-track” works that were previously to be funded by the government’s share of the Regional Fuel Tax.
However, that still left in question how the trains themselves were to be funded. Under the Regional Fuel Tax scheme, the ARC was to borrow around $500 million to purchase the electric trains – and would repay that debt over the course of about 30 years through their half-share of the Regional Fuel Tax. With the tax scrapped, and the ARC certainly not having $500 million up their sleeve, the government announced that they would pay for the trains, while at the same time taking on responsibility for the rail network, which at the moment is shared between them and the regional council.
Just before the budget, Steven Joyce went on a trip to Sydney to look at possible ways of funding the electric trains, and started talking about private-public-partnerships (PPPs) as one way the government could still acquire the trains, but avoid lumping another $500 million onto their books. On May 27th, he stated that PPPs were a “possibility”. He also said the following:
“I have asked Ministry of Transport officials to look into how this might work in the New Zealand context and expect their initial report in a few weeks.
“I do not want this investigation to delay the electrification project.
Mr Joyce says, after double tracking, electrification is the important next stage in the development of Auckland’s rail network.
“There are a number of options for funding the purchase of electric trains, including:
The Crown increases investment in KiwiRail, enabling it to purchase the trains.
KiwiRail borrows the money and the Crown provides an additional direct passenger subsidy until patronage increases.
Some form of PPP, most likely on an ‘availability’ basis.
“The government is committed to electrification. We must ensure it goes ahead in a way that both meets the needs of Aucklanders and ensures the most efficient use of government funds.
That was the end of May, it is now August and we still haven’t heard any further news on this matter. I’m not a fan of the PPP option, because it seems to have repeatedly failed overseas and ended up costing the tax-payer a crap load of money, but at the moment I just want to hear something. I can’t see how this delay can’t affect the electrification project.
So Steven Joyce, where is the funding for our electric trains?
Well I attended the open evening on the reopening of the Onehunga Branch Line this evening, and it was reasonably enlightening. It was good to catch up with a few fellow public transport advocates, and in general I think ARTA must have been extremely pleased with the turnout for the evening. I passed on to ARTA the feedback I wrote for the Campaign for Better Transport, and had some interesting discussions with both ARTA and KiwiRail staff. In terms of the five key points I detailed in the feedback form, ARTA seems to have the following response:
Service must terminate at Britomart. This seems almost certain to happen, as ARTA realise the success of the Onehunga Line is very dependent upon people being able to get all the way into town, and to not have to change trains at Newmarket. Nobody wanted to fully guarantee it, so let’s not count our chickens until the service is operating “some time early next year”.
Half hourly off-peak and weekend services. Unfortunately it seems as though ARTA are going to go with hourly off-peak and weekend frequencies to start with, with half-hourly frequencies only during peak hour. I pointed out that this was likely to make the service less attractive to people, and therefore is likely to result in lower patronage, making it very difficult to justify increasing patronage in the future. Apparently nothing is fully settled yet though, so I hope they change their mind on this one – particularly inter-peak on weekdays and during Dress-Smart’s opening hours on weekends.
ARTA to work with Dress-Smart. There seemed to be quite a lot of promise with relation to this point, with ARTA confirming they’ve talked to Dress-Smart about working together and making the service a success. Hopefully this will mean real-time information signs within the mall, good signage between the mall and the train station.
One month free trial period. Obviously this one was a bit difficult for ARTA representatives to answer, as it comes back to the amount of funding available. They did recognise that it was a good idea though.
Re-routing buses closer to the train station. Once again promising noises were made on this. Apparently there will also be a small park and ride area provided as well.
So overall it was definitely worthwhile going along. I found out a bit more information on the CBD Rail Tunnel too, but I might save that for a future post.
There have been plans for quite some time to add a station between Newmarket and Britomart, to serve the Parnell area and also potentially the university. It hasn’t been a simple process though, with debate between Ontrack, ARTA, Auckland City Council and various local groups over its location. I’m going to wade deeply into that debate!
Effectively, there is disagreement over where the station should go, and whether it should primarily be a local station for the suburb of Parnell or a station that would potentially be useful for university students. The local residents are most keen on it being a local station, and therefore being located near the existing Mainline Steam workshop buildings. In fact, in a presentation to Auckland City Council, a quite elaborate plan was detailed – and I include it below:
Now I agree that this plan potentially has some merit. It would be great for the valley that the train line runs through to be more than just a place for weeds and the storage of rusty old train wagons. The proposal could open up that area and encourage redevelopment. Hopefully it could also do something useful with the sheds that are currently used by Mainline Steam – they could be redeveloped quite nicely in fact.
However, what this proposal would not achieve, is a good form of rail access to the university. At the moment rail access to the university is quite poor, with the hike up from Britomart discouraging many people from using the train. If the station was located further down the hill towards university, then there is plenty of potential for it to act as a university station. Something like the following:
A covered pedestrian brige linking the station with Alten Road, and the university, would be critical to ensure the success of such a station. Considering that university students are high-users of public transport, such a station could become enormously popular. It could also take some pressure off currently overcrowded bus routes (like New North Road) as well as Britomart station.
There is some mention of this in the Universities Travel Plan, so it’ll be interesting if it does happen:
Obviously there is a reason why councils have minimum parking requirements in their District Plans, and that is to ensure that the roads don’t get clogged up with people looking for a parking space. However, what minimum parking requirements actually do is provide an enormous hidden subsidy for those who choose to drive, compared to those who choose to use public transport, or walk, or cycle. There are ways in which on-street parking could be controlled – through the use of designating particular areas for short-term parking, or operating residents-only parking permit schemes. I mean, Parnell and Ponsonby seem to get away just fine without enormous amounts of off-street parking. People might even choose to take the bus instead of the hassle of trying to find a parking spot.
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