Subscribe to RSSParnell Station Design Starts
ARTA has begun designing the potential Parnell station alongside the Mainline Steam depot at the foot of Parnell’s Domain as plans for a bus stabling park there fade.
KiwiRail’s plans to offer NZ Bus part of the land adjourning Mainline Steam and its buildings for stabling Link buses there hit strong opposition including a resolution from the Hobson Community Board expressing strong concerns about the idea because of the impact on the local community.
ARC officers have since met with bus operator Infratil and NZ Bus and KiwiRail, ARTA and the Auckland City Council.
As a result Infratil is looking at other sites near the Link bus route.
ARC Chair Mike Lee has suggested the 700 metre long Nelson St offramp which he thinks could store around 120 buses.
As for ARTA’s station designs, a revised track layout is being prepared that allows for two side platforms to be constructed adjacent to the depot with footbridge access between platforms using stairs and lifts.
The design being worked on would allow for access from the Parnell business district via a footbridge over the relocated Mainline Steam sidings and from the Domain via an at grade path.
KiwiRail is reviewing the track and station layouts and working out track and signalling costings.
That’s where the problem starts.
The project is a long way for being started before ARTA and the ARC go out of business and Auckland Transport takes over.
The ARC does not want the station looking like a modern commuter station but one that reflects rail’s heritage in keeping with Mainline Steam and the surrounds in the country’s oldest suburb.
That would include moving the old Newmarket train building and signal box to the area as a feature of the station.
Mainline Steam says it could use the old station building as offices or use it as some other feature.
ARC Chair Mike Lee admits he doesn’t even know where the old Newmarket buildings are being stored but recalls the previous government set aside $5m for the project, one million of which may have already been used for the building’s removal to storage.
Mainline Steam Trust operations manager Michael Tolich says it appears Mainline Steam can now stay at the depot on the KiwiRail land instead of having to move out to west Auckland as mooted - but on a year by year lease.
He said the problem now is that KiwiRail is talking of trebling its $25,000 (plus GST) annual lease, an increase the trust could not afford. It also pays $19,000 in annual rates.
Mr Lee says the ARC’s position on supporting a heritage station there has existed since 2007 but he is concerned at the lack of progress to enable something concrete to be started before the change in local body governance in November.
30 Comments
I am concerned that ARTA seems to have given in to the heritage people, compared to a much more useful station further north.
Agree, there doesn’t seem to have been a public debate about why they have chosen this site rather tha a far superior station further north.
So, why did they ARC bother paying for a consultants report comparing the possible Parnell station locations if they are just going to ignore it’s findings.
They better be planing something awesome for the sight to justify placing it where there are significantly less nearby residents, workers and transport connections.
Oh, capitulation to the anti-transport folks. We’ll have the wrong station for the next 100 years. Damn.
What a joke..The debate needs to publicised a lot more, so that everyone becomes aware of where the best location is..and it’s not there! I would love to see the numbers of how many students+workers down at the quay compare with the numbers visting the museum and village.
This is just one more reason why I am looking forward to the end of the ARC and transport being handled at least semi independently. Hopefully the ARTA design is going to be easy to just move north a bit when it comes time to build it.
To really make good use of this decision a bridge (cycle lane and walking) should be built above the station linking Parnell to the Domain with access to the station by stairs and elevator. The bridge across should also be a cycle bridge. From there a walkway to the museum and a (and dreams a free) path & bridge (cycle / walk) over Stanley street maintaining as much height as possible to Wynyard Street.
It’s time to bury the “station should go further north” debate once and for all. The heritage station site and the more northerly site are so close together they overlap. Why people get so worked up about it is beyond me.
The old Newmarket station is stored in Ranui.
if this is suppose to be a heritage site, then why does it look like a piece of shit? likewise the sheds on the wharves.
serially if they are that keen on keeping it, rip it down, build something new and recycle most the good bits and use them in the construction of something new.
seriously this is not eastern europe or london for that matter, this building from the pictures above looks tacky and run down. its not a grand station its a shitty tin shed. pull it apart salvage it and move on.
and the same should be said for the bullshit that is going on down on the water front.
10 mill here, 5 mill there, 30-40 mill later, nothing gets done and in 10 years time we will be re-visting the same old problems.
Carl, with you there. Heritage decisions are more about emotion than anything else, and the right people have got all emotional about these old sheds.
Don’t let the dead hand of the past strangle our futures.
I hope they leave room for a 3rd/4th track, so we dont get screwed over again when we need to expand the network.
“This is just one more reason why I am looking forward to the end of the ARC and transport being handled at least semi independently. Hopefully the ARTA design is going to be easy to just move north a bit when it comes time to build it.”
Uhm, Auckland Transport may well not be THAT much more independant from Auckland Council than ARTA is from ARC. That situation won’t change THAT much at all, I believe.
“It’s time to bury the “station should go further north” debate once and for all.”
Why? Give me a good reason, except that some people are now apparently creating facts on the ground to supersede what the expert reports said.
“The heritage station site and the more northerly site are so close together they overlap.”
They do not - I agree that 350m is not a “Britomart vs The Strand” level of difference (900m), but it will make a significant dent in the suitability of the future station for some university and lower parnell users.
“To really make good use of this decision a bridge (cycle lane and walking) should be built above the station linking Parnell to the Domain with access to the station by stairs and elevator.”
Auckland City Council has reportedly budgeted a couple hundred grand for a walk & cycling path to the new station from near Wellesley Street East.
“if this is suppose to be a heritage site, then why does it look like a piece of shit? likewise the sheds on the wharves”
Under that logic, some of the most valued theaters and museums and castles the world over should have been torn down. Heritage value isn’t solely assessed from how they look after people have let the buildings be run down for decades or longer.
I do believe that the old Newmarket station building and the mainline steam buildings are worth saving and re-purposing. But that’s not to mean they should trump a useful commuter train station for what is apparently going to be a Sunday excursion-stop type design now.
Why people get so worked up about it is beyond me.
“I hope they leave room for a 3rd/4th track, so we dont get screwed over again when we need to expand the network.”
Is the parnell rise tunnel able to take three tracks?
Geoff, 350m is a huge amount of difference, particularly when you consider that the main catchment of a rail station comes from about 400m radius.
350m further south is 350m closer to scrub and bush and 350 closer to a handful of detached historic homes. It’s also 350m closer to the museum, not that that matters as it is still 700m climb up a steep wooded gulley without a soul around.
It is about the same distance away from the main street of Parnell, so no biggie there.
But it is 350m further away from Carlaw Park office zone, 350m futher away from the high density residential and mixed use offices of lower Parnell and the Strand, 350m further away from the Link bus (now at the top of a steep hill via a few windy lanes, rather that almost right next to the station), 350m futher away from the legal precinct, and most importantly 350m further away from the universities.
The southern site is handy to a few apartments and the Parnell mainstreet, and nothing else. The northern site is handy to those also, plus a heap more commercial and residential sites, the law courts and the universities.
Karl, there is the old single lane tunnel alongside that could be brought into use… however once the CBD tunnel is built there would be no need for more than two tracks as there would only ever be two tracks worth of trains coming down from Newmarket. You’d have two tracks each on the Western and Southern lines, and two tracks each in the CBD tunnel and the Parnell section. Thats perfectly aligned.
Nick, it’s a pointless argument about north or south sites, as they are so close it’s irrelevant. The platforms for each site actually have overlapping locations, they are so close. The idea that people will use one, but not the other just isn’t true.
Nor is it true that you have to go further north to get closer to residents. Parnell’s residential area is south, not north.
It also isn’t true that people won’t go in the gully. The walkways there are popular, and dozens of homes are located there. It won’t be any less safe than anywhere else, especially with lights and CCTV cameras.
Geoff.
Could you cite a source for your data please.
Using statistics NZ data it appears that there are significantly more (approaching double) the number of residents living within 500m of the northern site.
http://transportblog.co.nz/2010/05/04/where-to-put-parnell-station-weighing-up-the-data/
Geoff, you either don’t know or don’t like some facts:
The exact train station locations have never been defined (obviously not, that is what discussion was for) but it is logical that a northern station cannot be further north than the southern end of the bridge over Carlaw Park Ave (unless you’d also rebuild the bridge, which would be great, but I am not holding my breath with our cash-strapped rail system). That gives you a range of about 500m in which to place the future station.
I think for a six-car EMU, we will need platforms of about 150m length. So that means there is a potential range shift of up to 350m. The fact that SOME of the potential station locations in that whole range overlap doesn’t mean the propoals do.
And if you don’t think 350m makes a difference to people’s behaviour, sorry then you just don’t know how short the average walking distance is that people are okay with.
As for residential areas, you may not have been around Parnell much recently? There’s much larger amounts of newer (and thus more densely settled) apartments north and northeast of the northern station location. The residential you are talking of is the historical Parnell - which Lee and his local mates want to have the station serving first and foremost, which is a bit weird, seeing that Lee isn’t exactly the person Parnellians would vote for… Anyway, this isn’t all about residential, as you would have taken from earlier posts - this is also about who would get OFF here, for example to go to the university, or to the eastern edge of the CBD.
“It also isn’t true that people won’t go in the gully.”
Who said that? The matter is that FEWER people will want to go into the gully at night than to a wide-open area. And the talk was also about the pathways to the Domain, which aren’t all that nice for a single person at night.
Oh, and I wanted to talk about Mike Lee’s proposal of the Nelson Street off-ramp to store buses. That sounds like an interesting idea, actually. Just - how to turn them around???
I imagined that they would use it like an exit ramp from the motorway and just travel one way along it parking to one side where it is wide enough
Karl - Yes the old Nelson St off ramp is an interesting idea but as you say, turning the buses around will be the tricky part. On the positive side, it will require little fencing to stop vandals as it is above ground with limited entry points One solution, albeit an expensive one would be to build a ramp down from Galatos St.
There is also the issue of what to do about the drivers, assuming all the buses are parked up in one line with just enough space to allow a bus to drive pass. How will a driver at the back get in and out of the site, will they have to walk 500m back to Nelson St(some could probably do with it)
As for Parnell I think it should be at the end of Heather St, roughly where it meets Bedford St, from there you could have a quite nice overbridge to get to the platforms, a bit like what is at Henderson but due to the height difference it would exit out at street level. This would put the norther end about 80m from the end of the Carlaw Park Ave Bridge and a 180m platform from there heading south would put the southern end at about the point where the mainline steam site starts opening up, about 100m from the main shed.
“Using statistics NZ data it appears that there are significantly more (approaching double) the number of residents living within 500m of the northern site.”
Be that as it may, most of Parnell’s residential area is south and east. Not sure why you are focusing on a 500m radius, passengers come from further away than that.
This is Parnell (in the yellow line), with the red squares being the two locations where the Newmarket station building can be sited:
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4118/4884620159_85aed9c162_b.jpg
Clearly the south site is closer to the majority of the residential area, and to the main street and the domain, although not by much, and I doubt either location would make the slightest difference as they are so close. The argument is just semantics really.
This is the three platform locations that have been looked at:
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4076/4884620169_b1cd8e1912_b.jpg
While we may talk about north site and south site, they are really just two ends of the same location. The difference is minor, and all three options could be accurately described as being at the north end of Parnell, beside the Carlaw Park development.
Why anybody thinks one is perfect, and one is a disaster, when they are a few seconds walk apart, is mystifying.
Hi Matt - what about a widening of the Nelson Street Ramp for a turning circle NEAR Galatos Street. No ramp over/actual connection to Galatos Street, just enough so you could turn a bus? There’s enough space between the ramps and the southbound SH1 lanes. Would still be a structure up in the air though, as the Nelson Street ramp is about 5-plus meters up.
Buses could then drive down the ramp, turn at the end, drive back up, and park near Nelson Street. So the walk wouldn’t be that long either. Though of course - where would they then go to? One might have to allow them to park their private cars on the off-ramp too, but that could work too - it IS pretty large.
As for Parnell - that is exactly what I think. You could have the station in a great location for commuters who have to use it every day, and still have a direct, short link to the Mainline Sheds for cultural use.
“Clearly the south site is closer to the majority of the residential area, and to the main street and the domain”
Geoff, perhaps you haven’t been to Parnell much so maybe you are missing the point.
Parnel’s areas of low density residential are to the south and east, but these are mostly historic villas with an average of about two people per property living there, or maybe ten to the acre. So yes they do cover the most area as you have pointed out, but far less people live in that area. But the areas further north around Augustus Tce, The Strand, Ronyane St are loaded with low and mid rise apartments with about a fifty people an acre! So sure you can say all the pretty houses are to the south and east, but far more people actually live on the northern side. Is the station for houses or people?!
Who cares about the domain, casual users aren’t going to get the train there at either site, they are both miles away through a steep gully. Walkers and joggers on the other hand would be happy to use either.
Interesting that you put a yellow line around and say “this is Parnell”, just because it’s called Parnell station. People are unlikely to walk 1.5 kilometres from Pt Erin like you have included in the line, but they are likely to walk from all the apartments outside your line that are a mere 250m away (and if the station is in the gulley by mainline steam, getting a bus stop or park and ride is almost impossible).
“Not sure why you are focusing on a 500m radius, passengers come from further away than that.”
A few people will walk to a station over ten minutes away (a 500m radius would equate to a 750m walk or so once you take the terrain and street layout into account), but most are going to come from the immediate area. Sure in other stations a lot of people will drive to the station and park there, or perhaps get a bus. But is that going to happen if the station is at the mainline steam site? Where does the carpark go, how does the bus get down there? The northernmost site has far better foot access, far better bus access and perhaps some potential for park and ride.
“Why anybody thinks one is perfect, and one is a disaster, when they are a few seconds walk apart, is mystifying.”
350m takes the average person 5-6 minutes to walk, so not a few seconds, about 300 seconds. That’s pretty key if the difference is between a nice visible station handy to main streets and walking routes, right next to a big commercial development and plenty of apartments…. or a station that is five minutes up a deserted gulley from those things. Five more minutes would double the walk to the university. There are 40,000 people studying or employed in the university precinct, what is the use in making the station over ten minutes walk away from them, so that it can be just five minutes walk away from a few dozen Parnell villas?!
No one has said either is perfect or a disaster, just that one is superior. You are right that either site will catch the main bit of Parnell, Carlaw Park and the Domain. But the northern site is five minutes walk closer to way more residences and jobs and the universities, not to mention the fact it has direct car, bus and foot access from Parnell Rise/Carlaw Park Ave. On the other hand the southerly site is five minutes closer to more scrubland in the Domain and a handful of villas, yet has very limited potential for access except on foot. Plus the domain and residential area of historic villas will always stay that way, very little potential for development. On the northern edge however there is a huge amount of potential development sites. Over a few decades there could be two or three times as many residences and jobs up that way, toward the south it will still just be the same houses.
If both catch the main bits of Parnell, why not have it at the one closest to where all the people will live and work FFS?!
Nick, the options are so close it’s irrelevant. Both main options are north of the MLS depot, beside Carlaw Park, and none in the gully proper. Funnily enough, the south site is closer to Carlaw Park than the north site is.
Some people seem to have this idea that a station is planned somewhere up in the upper gully in the trees. That isn’t the case.
5-6 minutes to walk 350m? Maybe if you have a cane. But since the two sites are more like 200m apart, or about 100m between platform ends, it doesn’t really matter.
It’s 350m difference from the midpoints of the platforms, not ‘like 200m’. See the quote:
“The design being worked on would allow for access from the Parnell business district via a footbridge over the relocated Mainline Steam sidings and from the Domain via an at grade path.”
This indicates they are talking about the more southerly site option, not the mid way ‘compromise’ site that you seem to be thinking about.
5-6 minutes to walk 350km equates to about four kilometres an hour, that is fairly slow (I get about 6km/h myself) but these thing do need to be design with everyone in mind.
So they are not so close it is irellevant, and yes putting stations in the right place does matter plenty (As I said above either site would be fine for Carlaw Park and Parnell main street, it is the things further afield I am concerned about).
It would be like if Britomart was 350m back from where it is now, say in the carpark of the supermaket on Quay St. That wouldn’t matter for someone going to Customs st or the Downtown Mall, but it would matter for someone going up to Victoria St for example.
And of course it isn’t just the distance, it is the strategic position. They moved Grafton Station a mere 250m along from where it was to get better pedestrian and bus connections. Why not have Parnell station in a place that has good pedestrian connectivity and the link bus going right past, why put it in a gully with no bus access and a five minute walk up through some back streets (or the bush of the domain) to get anywhere?
Again with the gully and the bush walks. Take another look at the location options. They are all beside Carlaw Park, not up the gully.
It probably comes down to whether or not one wants the former Newmarket station building to be involved. That either has to go on the flat near the mainline points into MLS, or across the tracks on the flat beside the satellite dishes. AFAIK the Parnell Rise option excludes having the station building involved.
Geoff
I was of the understanding the southern site was the one Parnell Inc proposed:
http://www.parnell.net.nz/images/Station-Stevens_Lawson_plan_LARGE.jpg
Sorry if i have been mistaken.
There was an engineering report done on the topic but I cant seem to track it down atm.
I was under the impression that one was not favoured by KiwiRail, as being too technically difficult due to being on the embankment. It also wouldn’t accommodate the Newmarket Station building, unless this group wants the building to not be directly related to the station site?
350m difference is indeed a major difference for everyday use, Geoff. It equates to (at 1.5m / second, which is an average - not slow - walking speed) to 4 minutes. The guy with a cane is walking approx 1.0m / second, and thus needs almost 6 minutes. NZTA data, by the way.
So yes, it does make a SIGNIFICANT difference.
Its in fact empirically proven that it does, for train stations, plus we have census data available here to back up the patronage catchment stats too.
The points made by Nick R and Karl are sound and reflect a deoth of understanding, technical merit and solidly founded knowledge of both the area and in the known factors around urban and business density, multi0nodal transportation and the variables that Must be taken into account when selecting an optimal location for railway station/transport hub.
Where as for “Geoff” to solely focus on the cause of the residential suburban housing at the southern end of Parnell is completey flawed and narrow-midned in the extreme.
The business and commercial employment in the northern end (in-bound by The Strand, Carlaw park, Garfield St and St. Georges Bay Road), make up a very substantial commuter “work-day” populus.