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The plan for a Parnell train station at Cheshire Street continues to gather steam.
Both the Auckland City Council and the ARC are keen on the idea - and ARC Chair Mike Lee has been keen to progress it before local government reform happens later in the year.
On Friday, representatives from KiwiRail, ARC and Auckland City Council will meet to discuss the proposal.
The meeting will also consider the short and long term uses of the KiwiRail land holdings alongside Cheshire Street, including the Mainline Steam buildings. Mainline, which is on KiwiRail land, is having to relocate, to near Henderson at Paremuka after being in the old Parnell shed near Auckland Domain for over 20 years.
Cheshire St Parnell could see a new Auckland train station here
Earlier, the Auckland City Council’s development committee had come out in support the location of the Parnell Rail station with a primary access at Cheshire Street. It talked of the the importance of servicing the Parnell community as well as providing reasonable access connections to Stanley Street and the University .
And an earlier ARC transport committee talked of how a balance may need to be found between serving different catchments such as museum visitors, Parnell and Carlaw Park business node residents and visitors, and university students.
It said it was important that development of any station in Parnell is based on good urban design principles and leads to a high quality development and the opportunities for heritage and environmental enhancement needed to be fully explored.
The Parnell community committee and business group Parnell Inc had been very active in pushing for Cheshire St, despite the new Grafton station which now serves the Domain and Museum area.
The group wants to see the KiwiRail developed into a destination in its own right, “centred around re-development of the magnificent carriage works building and highlighting the rich heritage of the Waipapa Stream valley.” Its plan also wanted to incorporate the old Newmarket Station building and signal house which went into storage.
The other week, the Auckland City Council allocated funds to design a cycle lane from Grafton Rd to Stanley St into the Domain and to the proposed Parnell station on Cheshire St.
But, talking of funds, there has not been any public word on how funding could be met for the station.
3 Comments
As has been set out with maps and good arguments on a fellow blog (http://transportblog.co.nz/2010/05/04/where-to-put-parnell-station-weighing-up-the-data/), a station 500m further north of Chesire Street would be significantly better:
- several thousand more jobs and residences in walking range
- somewhat shorter walk to the university
- double-sided catchment with less grade difference, rather than one-sided catchment with steep rises
- would still cover Parnell shops in walking range AND the would also be in the same easy walking range of any upgraded Mainline Steam “destination” locality.
I am very much in favour of restoring destinations like the Mainline sheds, but we should not make our transport decisions on the basis of an unproven drawcard (which even if it becomes a great drawcard, will attract zilch extra passengers in the morning, and probably very few extra ones on weekday evenings).
We need more day-to-day passengers, not cultural stops!
On the topic of a station for the museum, it is a non-starter in any location. The main reason I say this is the 40m (!) vertical climb from the rail level up to the museum itself.
This means anyone hopping off the train at Parnell to get to museum faces a climb equivalent to walking up to the top floor of a ten story building.
Anyone wanting to visit the museum by rail would be wise to simply hop off at Newmarket or Grafton, each is less than 10 minutes walk along a mostly flat route.
As much as I’d love to see a station at the bottom of Cheshire Street it does make sense to have it where the TV dish is. I think as long as walking / cycle bridges are built over to Heather Street (as far up as possible as it’s a bummer of a hill to walk up) I still think a bridge should be built from the Museum to Parnell, say Aorere street? Also the if a station was built down at the TV dish it should have a bridge to Wynyard Street / Alten Road. As that would be such a good link to the city.