Last week at Auckand City Council’s Transport Committee meeting, representatives from ARTA and KiwiRail gave an interesting presentation on the CBD rail tunnel. The whole presentation is available on the city council website. It doesn’t have that much actual information that we don’t know about already, but does include a number of interesting and useful diagrams.
One diagram that I find particularly noteworthy is a cross-section of the tunnel. This is included below:
As shown in the diagram above, both the Karangahape and the Newton stations will be well below ground level – around 20m down I think, which should make for an interesting construction process. The Karangahape station itself is proposed to have the tracks at a 1% grade, which is a bit unusual as stations are often completely flat (or on a vertical curve to aid with braking and accelerating). Hopefully that won’t make it difficult for trains to pull away from the stations when they’re fully loaded.
There’s also some information on the three station locations, although it doesn’t seem that we’re at the point of working out possible entry points.
I like the fact that particular emphasis is being given to tying in the stations with land development that will happen around them. It is this link between improving rail access to the CBD and the urban renewal that will bring, which provide the greatest benefits from this project.
So where to next? Well this is outlined below. It seems as though we won’t see a final costing, business case and other documentation until December.
Seven years from now it would be great to have this built and operational.
Do we know how long the flat sections at the stations are? Like are they designed for six car, eight car or even nine car sets?
It would be a shame if they designed down to Britomart’s limititions of six cars.
Not sure Nick. I heard somewhere something about 200m station boxes…
I would love it if property prices would start going up in these areas
Already told one of the developers I work with that he had a future rail station about 30m away from his site. He was quite pleased with the idea…
“There’s also some information on the three station locations, although it doesn’t seem that we’re at the point of working out possible entry points.”
Why should they? Way too detailed for many years yet. Let’s not waste time and money on that. Though it would be nice to have some graphics for display purposes.
Max, you just have to look at the development which has occurred around Britomart over the past few years, and continues to happen. Having a railway station nearby certainly boost growth potential.
The proposed 1% (1 in 100) grade for the stations shouldn’t be too much of a problem – the J’ville line has a number of stations on a 1 in 40 grade.
I’d have to say a CBD line would go a long way in making moving back more an option. Do you think in the benefit analysis they would push that the more livable AK is the more likely kiwis will stay or come home, after all Clark and Key have spoken on the brain drain numerous times. I have lived in London and now Melbourne and the transport system is integral to city lifestyle. It’s about more then going to uni or work but also wining and dining, seeing a movie, an art exhibition, hitting the clubs, a comedy show, theater, concert or whatever.
Providing we stick to the idea of having 3 car EMU’s with each carriage being 24 metres long then I really hope they make the station boxes big enough for 9 car trains (3 EMU’s linked together), that would mean they need to be about 220m long. Suburban stations can always be lengthened later but due to the gradient we will only get one chance with the tunnel. Also have the considered lengthening the tunnels at the Mt Eden end to get a slightly better grade? Extending the eastern portal to under Normanby Rd would not be much further but would also eliminate a level crossing.
In some ways I thought it would be better to have 2 car sets, so that we can have 4 and 6 car sets in off peak and 6 car and 8 car sets peak
I am excited about this, I don’t really care what grades the stations are on or the length of the platforms as long as it gets built..!
I certainly hope more info continues to trickle out and that we won’t be left wondering what’s going on until December.
Hey Kiwi, you and me both! I’d like to come home to a functional transport system, rather that having to buy a car, fill it with gas only to spend half my spare time sitting in traffic. In the meantime I think I’ll stay here with a weekly Metcard in my wallet.
I spotted a nice apartment for sale in Mt Albert that I could consider buying but it seems a little, er, remote. By Melbourne standards an apartment next to a station only five stops out of the CBD would be considered basically inner city, but in Auckland you have to think more in terms of congested streets and and how clogged is the access to the motorway.
Bring on electrification and the tunnel!
K Road would be a great chance to demolish that awful parking building and reinvigorate that ghettoish space.
Everyone grab a spade and start digging! Seriously living in Kingsland and often taking half an hour to get home by bus from Albert Street is ridiculous. It only takes 40 minutes to walk it, which I would do more except for that horrible New North Road/Dominion Road intersection which ruins an otherwise pleasant walk. Getting on a train at Aotea Square and being in Kingsland shops in 10 minutes would be a dream come true.
George, if you look closely there are red lines around it and that other ugly building across the road from the carpark. Hopefully somewhere there is a key to that picture which says tha buildings with red lines and to be demolished and redeveloped.
Jarbs, I wonder if the (all but certain) massive increase in property values around K-Rd station might turn those ideas of building over parts of the CMJ into a reality?
Would they dig a honking great hole in the ground, starting from ground level, and then fill it mostly back in once the station has been built?
Or would they expand a section of tunnel to a station size by working underground and passing the rock out via the tunnel?
Who knows Obi. I think it depends on the situation. At Aotea station I bet they’re praying the bungee site stays undeveloped for a good while yet as that would be a very handy spot to store equipment and get at the station from. However, there is a consented skyscraper almost as tall as skytower for that site so I don’t know if they’ll be lucky in that respect.
Regarding K Road, there are the fairly poorly used sites indicated in one of the photos with red lines around them. Perhaps they would be station access points. The K Road station will be the deepest and therefore perhaps the most challenging to construct.
The report at the start of the year stated that midtown/Aotea would be the hardest to build simply due to the narrow corridor available. Yes that Elliot St site could be really useful as a staging area although may need some tricky negotiations with the land owner as it would affect when they build their tower (its not likely to be soon due to the current economic conditions)
The landowner might be quite happy to get a few years worth of rent out of KiwiRail while construction happens. All they’d need to do is pay more than the parking operator.
If that site is developed first though, then that would make things trickier.
If they dig down 20m and make the hole big enough to fit a station, then that is a BIG hole. Why would you fill it back up again? Dare I say it, you could build an underground car park on top. Then a building at ground level obviously. There isn’t much else you’d want to locate underground in the excavated void other than parking, it’d bring in some revenue, you wouldn’t have to make the station roof as thick as if you covered it back up with 15-20m of dirt, and provision of underground parking at one location might save an above-ground site from being used for parking. It’d also be better for future access… say if there is a fire, then the repairs could be carried out easier by cutting a big hole between the underground carpark and the station.
On the other hand, you could have a 20m high atrium over the platforms letting in tonnes of natural light. Like Canary Wharf LU. That mostly precludes building at street level on top of the station.
One consideration is disposing of the excavated rock and soil. If you’re digging down, then there are going to be a hell of a lot of dump trucks coming in to the CBD. If you widen the tunnel by digging while underground then there is the option of sending the spoil along the tunnel. If that means sending it to Britomart then there isn’t much improvement, unless you can figure out some way of dumping it in the harbour nearby and reclaim some land. Otherwise you’d send it to Mt Eden and people there are going to be subject to a procession of dump trucks. I don’t see any good solution here.
I love underground stations. I just hope they build something memorable, rather than cheap.
Interesting points obi, and disposing of the rock will certainly be a challenging part of this project. If the TBM starts digging from the Mt Eden end (might be easier going downhill?) then trucks would have reasonably quick access to the Newton Road interchange with SH16 to shift the soil westwards (possibly via Waterview Connect if they then wanted to go south).
I’d love some natural light to filter down into the stations. Some of the stations on that Jubilee Line extension in London are just fantastic (although so was their price!)
I just had a “duh” moment. If the spoil is sent along the tunnel to Mt Eden, then it can be loaded on to a train on the existing line. No dump trucks needed.
And if they start tunneling at Mt Eden then it’s down hill all the way and the tunnel boring machine will be faster
Yeah I guess you could store the rock from a day’s digging and then send it west on some last night freight train. Pretty handy really.
“Some of the stations on that Jubilee Line extension in London are just fantastic”
I’m a keen photographer and like architecture and have photographed all the stations. I was traveling along the line one day in 1999 when we stopped at Southwark. That hadn’t happened before. So I hopped off the train for a look. It was the opening day of the station, the staff were as proud as punch, they all had cameras, and they all came outside so I could photograph them in a group outside the station. There is a neat LU logo on a stalk attached to the veranda of the station that I like and they were standing underneath it.
Josh – if you zoom into the text, you’ll see the red highlighted buildings are those around the CMJ that have piles (ie high-rise buildings), so require more care if the tracks pass under them. Doesn’t mean they are going to flatten those buildings
Matt L has the best comment I reckon (give yaself a chocolate fish Matt):
“Also have they considered lengthening the tunnels at the Mt Eden end to get a slightly better grade?”
The gradients are crucial to this project – even with electric motors, it is 3.5% gradient (ie 1:28, or 1m rise every 28m along). IIRC, that is significantly steeper than the steepest gradient we currently have of around 1:35. Stopping and especially starting up these angles are going to slow even EMUs.
Serious thought must be given to easing the gradient if the economic benefits are going to flow – steep gradients cause more reliability problems (timekeeping and breakdowns, and higher operating costs). Pushing the line back to Kingsland/Morningside would dramatically ease the gradient, and wouldn’t cost more than $150m or so extra. Not much on a $1bn+ project.
That would also allow the route to be pushed from Kingsland a short way across to follow the SH16 corridor, which allows cut’n'cover cuttings rather than tunneling – far cheaper and faster. This could allow the Newton station to be in the gully and service the Ponsonby/Arch Hill area, which would add new population to the catchment (the Newton station adds few people – it overlaps Mt Eden massively and seems to replace it).
Also IIRC, the Elliot St tower hit financial problems, and is highly unlikely to proceed unless the CBD real estate market turn around (very unlikely – vacancy rates shot up after the recession hit). So that would make an excellent building site – they could even build horizontally to make Aotea station – it’s quite an embankment!
So, my two cents – ARTA should pause for breath, and put this route out to public consultation and be prepared to rethink the route. Don’t stall the project, just rethink before we commit to running tracks from the lowest point (Britomart) to the highest point of the inner West line (Mt Eden).
Whoops! For those worrying about Benefit-Cost Ratios (BCRs) for my above suggestion of easing the gradient by pushing the CBD line out to Morningside, don’t forget that rail freight is potentially a big user of this deviation.
Think Northland forests coming into harvest over the next 2 decades being freighted into Ports of Auckland via the West line and this new CBD line. More importantly, think of an inland port at Henderson or Kumeu like the just opened Wiri inland port (trucks drop containers off for off-peak railing into port). The reverse freight trip will not be viable if the gradient is what is currently recommended (1:28), and even downhill freight may struggle with stopping!
And of course as the areas passed through are all white-collar office and residential, there should be no freight pickup on the CBD line (whether surface or tunnel route), so the exact track route is not vital, but passenger station locations are. Which is why a Newton station by SH16 from Newton Rd westwards would feed residential areas not covered by Mt Eden. Whereas Kiwirail /ARTA seem to be planning 2 Newton stations (1 replacing old Mt Eden), with a lot of overlap.
Notice too on the Kiwirail presentation to ACC that Kiwirail don’t plan to ask the community what we think til after they have the business case and concept plans ready – meaning they will have ‘done too much work to reconsider routes & station locations’. So we will be able to pick the wallpaper colour. Brief but meaningful consultation should take place at each stage – 1 month won’t kill the project’s timeline.
Bob, I agree about easing the gradient, but I’m not sure if using the CBD tunnel for freight is a great idea anyway. I assume the lines will be unchanged thru mt eden parnell etc(current newmarket) so just come in the “scenic route LOL” It’s not as if time presssure and they can do it at off-peak times. Leave the commuting trains to the tunnel..and then off peak times eg 9pm freight can come in the long way through newmarket..better anyway as all the frieght lines into the port basically pair off from the east.
About the gradient…straight after kingsland (coming north)split the tracks and the CBD tunnel line swings north and hits the gully which is north western motorway..there’s enuff embankment there for cutting small trench all the way to spagetti in my opinion. Some current MT eden station patrons will be pissed(they have to walk a bit, but come on) the area really getting screwed is a prison LOL (assuming new commuter services skip MT Eden)
Once the train line starts to hit spagetti it goes underground (under sh16..THUS WAHAY ..an even shorter tunnel! Save$$$ and dramatically ease the gradient.
THEN BUILD A TRAM LINE ALL THE WAY UP QUEEN ST AND KEEP GOING TILL EDEN PARK VIA NEWTON ST STATION,(for those residents/workers that area)
I know my idea screws over newton area residents a bit..but I think a tram solves issues.
Bob – I don’t think it is good for the line to go under SH16 to kingsland as there isn’t really anything in between K Rd and there for a station. I think a station at Symonds St is perfect and would have a huge catchment, the area is also planned to get a lot of development focus in the future. I am jut saying extend the line 100m or so to remove a level crossing. You also have to think about how the trains will run, Josh has done a few posts on this in the past which I agree with and putting the tunnel to Kingsland would compromise that.
Yeah the problem with making the “joint” with the western line too far west is that you make it unattractive for trains heading in the Newmarket-Grafton-Newton-K Road service pattern. I quite like the most recent alignment, though I hope the western line gets lowered a bit to ease the grades. 3.5% is really too steep in my opinion.
Freight it the CBD tunnel is completely off the cards, it would add a whole bunch more design constraints, particularly a lesser grade and possibly extraction systems for diesel traction. Anyway the surface route via Parnell or Orakei is pretty inconsequential for freight so there is no need.
When you think about possible routing of suburban trains it becomes apparent that the southern portal of the tunnel needs to work well for both the western line and the link back to Newmarket via Grafton.
I.e. the tunnel will be most efficient if trains run through both ways at the same sorts of headways, like for every train going in one way you need another coming out the other.
The problem with a Morningside deviation is that you’d have only the western line entering the tunnel at the southern portal, while the Eastern and Southern lines plus the Onehunga and Manukau branches would enter at the northern portal. Thats a massive inbalance, as every other line on the network would need to become a western line train. Better to have the southern portal allow access for half of the trains from Newmarket.
so who will develop the business case? ARTA, the ACC, Kiwirail, the ARC, or NZTA?
Lucy it will be the same team who has done the work so far: a consulting firm on behalf of ARTA and KiwiRail. Now the REALLY good question is who will be the requiring authority for the designation. In my mind that will have to be KiwiRail.