From the NZ Herald
Officials are contacting more than 200 landowners whose properties are in the way of a just-revealed route for an Auckland inner city rail link.
Auckland Transport today released its preferred path for the City Rail Link, which is expected to cost up to $2.86 billion.
It extends the rail line through Britomart, under Albert, Vincent and Pitt Streets, then beneath Karangahape Road and the Central Motorway Junction to Symonds Street before rising to join the western line.
Authorities would need to buy property from 210 owners to secure the route, Auckland Transport said.
Underground land from 70 interests, including 12 unit title developments with multiple owners, would also need to be purchased for the tunnels and stations, it said.
Auckland Transport chief executive David Warburton said officials were now informing landowners whose properties would be directly affected by the route…
..Auckland Mayor Len Brown said the route identification was a big step towards the completion of “one of the most important public transport projects” in the recent history of Auckland.
“The CRL won’t just provide a convenient train line below the city centre. It will unleash the potential of the entire suburban rail network, increasing frequency, reliability, and speed of trains across all of Auckland.”
More detail here and more analysis to come later.
I attended the press briefing and will post more later.
A couple of comments:
- How the hell do they think they will be able to achieve this if they cant even bring in integrated ticketing.
- Cut and cover in Albert Street. My god that is going go cause a lot of disruption.
Well lets hope they don’t have an obstructive private sector interest trying to install their own inferior rail tunnel downtown!
Cut and cover in Albert might not be too bad, they can probably construct it with a top down method which would have only minimal road closure while most of the work goes on underneath.
Lets hope they do fine a why to keep the cross roads open. Imagine trying to cross town without Custom Street, Victoria Street, Wellesley or Wyndham street!!!
I do wonder where all the buses that currently go down Albert will be diverted to. Can they make Queen Street bus only for the period (and then do a Wellington Street on it!)?
There is a crap load of capacity to run buses on Queen St, it is a four lane arterial with almost no strategic function for general traffic. They could reroute Albert St buses there during construction.
The cut and cover from Aotea Station to Britomart raises the interesting question of what else could they put under there while they are at it? A subsurface bus tunnel, or divert general traffic? Maybe a coach terminal, bus layover depot, or even a long thin mall?
Probably on the wrong forum for this but it would be rather easy to add lots of inner city car parking between the road layer and the rail layer.
Just adding to my stupid idea, they could replace downtown carpark with underground parking which is already owned by the council.
It is currently a huge building in a prime space – on the axis with Britomart, Westfeild and viaduct. Surely there is better use for this land but they cant do anything as they have an existing car park which is hard to get rid of without replacing.
That building has it’s days numbered, it’s even identified for redevelopment in the city centre masterplan. There’s only so long the council will sit on a site like that with carparking building.
They could get rid of it easily, the whole builidng only holds enough cars about two or three trainloads of commuters.
Harvey- “Do a Wellington St on it”!
New PT meme arrives.
Lets not get too carried away, this is route protection info, not a detail on construction.
The point is the tunnel between Britomart and Aotea stations will be going south up the road, not under buildings, so any property owners know if it affects them.
Main issue on Albert St that will cause trouble is a 1.6m diametre Stormwater pipe that runs right down the centre of the road. I assume this will have to be dug up and to either side of the street first.
As for the cross roads will be great for traffic flow if these are partially blocked! Auckland CBD really needs to get away from this mentality of cars speeding from one side to the other. I imagine for these major streets that they would be able to dig up 2 thirds of the intersection, leaving space for one lane each way, then cover the bit that was dug up and let the traffic over that bit so they could continue.
Mt Eden retained and an ‘Inner West Interchange’ station…reveals a fair bit of their thinking re service patterns…
Inner West is nice if it’s close enough to Dominion Road for easy connections. Not sure about Mt Eden – perhaps a case of keeping the options open for the moment.
Is there a higher resolution map around anywhere?
http://www.aucklandtransport.govt.nz/improving-transport/city-rail-link/PublishingImages/AT-image-CRL-alignment-hi-res.jpg
Weird to view this map as North is on the left, when the convention is North at the top.
Noticed that as soon as I looked at the diagram and without reading the article – can you elaborate on the service patterns?
Well admittedly I’m spitballing but my immediate thoughts were a) the obvious Dominion Road connection; and b) a way of getting away with not building the eastern link as mooted on here a while back by a commenter.
Yep, that interchange station is only needed if you don’t build the eastern link. Without the link you have to turn half the trains on the network around at that point and send them back to where they just came from.
Groan…we’ll never learn.
I think this station would be great anyway as well placed to connect to New North and Dominion Road buses.
I dont think it would be used for turning trains as corridor limited in that area. Morningside much better suited if that were to go ahead as a 4 tracks wide at the station. However it could be used as a bus interchange if east link did not get built so people from West could head to vicinity of future Newton station.
A station at Dominion Rd is a good idea, but it should be achieved by shifting Mt Eden a few hundred metres west.
If you think about it having a terminal station at the southern end of the tunnel is little different from the current arrangement capacity wise. Sure you get the new western line access, but everything else still has to come in and out through the same two track throat tunnel at Britomart.
The new station is defiantly well placed for Dominion Road trams/buses.
Mt Eden station would be completely missed by most trains operating nearby (the exception being a direct west to south service). I’m sure the case for closing it would be strong after full construction.
Surely Mount Eden will close as part of the CBDRL, Newton better serves most of its catchment with the exception of the are around Enfield and Edwin streets, south east of the station.
Cant see any post CBRL patterns that would utilise Mt Eden?
It would be nuts not to close Mt Eden Station. With almost all trains heading into the tunnel, you’d hardly see any trains serving this piece of track. Plus it’s just so close to Newton Station.
Alternatively keep Mt Eden station, don’t build Newton Station and save yourself $300 million. Of all the stations I think Newton has the most questionable transport benefits – it’s hardly an area with poor PT access at the moment, rail or bus.
I don’t think there is any way to keep Mt Eden station unless 2 seperate (but connected) ones are built just south of the junction between Eastern and Western links, so that is’nt really an option.
Newton does often great future redevelopment potential, however is probably highest cost and most difficult build station. So therefore is most likely to be staged.
I’m a little confused. Just what is an “interchange” station – does that mean we are getting 4 new stations?
And what does that mean for trains coming from the west and south?
Considerate it as a terminus for everything but the western line.
I would have thought we would have learnt our lesson about having terminus stations in the central city…..
I am confused, doesn’t the diagram show links from the CRL to the Western line both in East and West directions? They just have not shown the rest of the existing Western line where it goes into Britomart. And the 2.86b figure that is still being used includes the cost of the Eastern link I thought.
Yes the diagram shows both options, at this early stage they are allowing for either (which is the best thing to do).
I am guessing that a complex four-track section of railway between the west-facing CRL portal and this new interchange is going to look pretty horrible. You’re going to need a lot of pretty complex track network to turn the trains around, right in the middle of inner suburbia.
On the plus side, this Inner Western Interchange is close enough to the horrible New North/Dominion motorway monstrosity that hopefully we need to knock it down.
Almost 8yrs to complete? Its 3.5kms, two tunnels and 3 stations.
KL is building a new MRT line – 51kms, 31 stations (5 underground), all done in 6yrs…..
Yeah itl probably be done a lot cheaper too. Lots of tickets to concerts etc for the Auckland council staff c/o the construction companies
Is it just me who sheds a tear whenever I see an aerial photo of the CBD and how much land the motorway takes up that could have been offices? Too bad the motorway system wasn’t located further out — it really strangles the CBD.
Yep a real tragedy. I think Josh once calculated that the motorway junction occupies the same amount of land as the Queen St valley from Aotea Square to the waterfront.
Initial plans were to have the motorways a lot further out, but there was the fear that the Harbour Bridge wouldn’t generate enough toll revenue to cover it’s costs if it was ‘bypassed’ by the motorway system, so they redesigned the plans to drive SH1 over the bridge. The downside of that was the need to drag all the motorways right into the centre and wrapping the big interchange around town. By that time everyone though the idea of driving to work in the city was fantastic and they’ve been expanding it every since.
…but never fear, there is a silver lining. The CRL stations are going to have a massive impact on land values adjacent to the stations. Between the stations at K Rd and Newton lies the CMJ, a big hole in the ground filled with motorways. With any luck the land value uplift that the CRL causes will raise land values to the point where it makes economic sense to cap over the motorway and build above it. The section between Upper Queen St and Upper Symonds St looks like an ideal candidate to me.
You could always lower the motorway and build over the top like the Victoria Park Tunnel.
In London you drive right under buildings on stilts
Bring the norwegians in. A friend was over there recently and said they’ve built tunnels spiralling up through mountains. We must bring in whoever has the most expertise on this.
I wonder how long Mt Eden will remain a prison?
It’s too close to the Newton Station and a perfect place for CBD expansion..
The new prison tower already looks like offices (future proofing?).
Does this mean we have to start a campaign to stop the demolition of the “castle” part of the prison now?
Good stuff AT! Keep the momentum going!
I had an interesting discussion on Twitter with whoever runs the Auckland Transport twitter account, about the Inner West Interchange and the Eastern Link (the bit of rail connection Grafton and Newton). It seems that AT have yet to decide whether they need/want to build the Eastern Link, and also yet to decide whether that decision impacts on whether or not this Inner West Interchange happens.
My feeling is if you have the Eastern Link then you don’t really need the Inner West Interchange. We have too many stations in that part of the network already anyway. Although, if Newton and K Road are staged, then having no stations at all between Kingsland and Aotea seems a bit weird.
Looks like Mt Eden is there as indicative only (surely).
There’s something very wrong if you need to build a major interchange station where there otherwise isn’t a need for a station. This interchange is really a shortchange. It’s a band aid on the wound caused by not building the eastern link at Mt Eden.
The result of a very old fashioned approach to network design by the Aussie consultants it seems. Yes, daft.
Is a new terminus and station construction really cheaper than the Eastern link?
Probably not.
It’s quite funny listening to Leighton Smith on Newstalk ZB today bashing Loopy Len and his toy train set because of this annoucement. Plus all the ignorant and uninformed comments being made by callers. The level of information out there is not nearly enough.
Someone suggesting that the proposed route should be expanded to take in the Wynyard Quarter and the AUT (and an extra $500m – which seems conservative)
http://www.theaucklander.co.nz/news/city-rail-link-route/1442885/
Stephen Selwood is a professional troll and the NZCID is just a front group for large banks that would love to clip the ticket of large infrastructure projects like they have done in Aussie the past few years. Just look up the Clem Simich Tunnel and Airport Link in Brisbane where these folks have been involved. paid themselves $120 million for Financial Engineering!!! And the Clem Simish tunnel consortium went bust.
I think engineering considerations make that route unrealistic. Is Wynyard really that important in the CBD yet, or even in a decade. I suspect far more people will still work near Aotea and K Road. Also there will soon be a traim and in twenty years the North Shore Rail link will go right through there.
As for the University it isnt really far from Aotea station, only 650 metres to Aotea from Centre of University at corner of Wellesley and Symonds St.