Subscribe to RSSMorningside Drive Blocked For League
In a new clampdown as part of the Eden Park-area RWC measures, Morningside Drive around the rail station was closed to traffic tonight.
Patrons going to the train station had to walk through a gated area.
More than 8300 people caught the train to Kingsland or Morningside Station for tonight’s Warriors game.
Special event buses from a number of other locations around the city carried about 3000 and following complaints during the last trial run for the Blues -Crusaders game, a mobility van took those who could not walk from Morningside train station to Eden Park after arriving from the west.
We saw all tracks at Morningside being used to take people back West after the game.
The previous league game saw a lot of bad drunken behaviour. I noticed lots of empty beer bottles abandoned near the cordons where patrons were checked for carrying alcohol and to make sure they were not drunk.
There was certainly a stepped up police and security presence.
I encountered numerous residents complaining about the lockdown and nervous about what state some league fans would be when they passed complaining last time there was frequent urination over their plants.
Warriors disappointed their home crowd. Parramatta won 24-18.
11 Comments
I caught the train at Grafton then back after the game. Very quick in both directions. Far better than games I’d been to years ago. The channels leading to the station had a couple nearly empty and others packed. The whole journey from Eden park back to Grafton only took about 25min. Well done Auckland.
Just got back from the game, they really should have grade separated Morningside Dr as part of the world cup works so that those trains they had stabled at Morningside could be used without impacting pedestrians.
Matt L are you saying that the trains stabled at morningside impacted the pedestrians. I never saw anything on the news. I hope nobody got to badly hurt, I guess they will have to sort this out before the next practice run.
MM
Mickeymouse - No wouldn’t have impacted the pedestrians. as you can see in photo 2 the road was segregated so that it could be controlled when a train needed to head towards Kingsland. One advantage of it being a 10 min walk away is it spreads out the crowd so it is much easier to control.
I should also add my biggest complaint with transport about both the Warriors game and the Round the Bays this morning was that trains weren’t extended past Henderson. Yesterday they had the usual Saturday trains plus some additional trains to give a half hour frequency but from Henderson they had extra trains starting and terminating to give a 15 min frequency. Today there was no trains past Henderson what so ever meaning that I had to walk 20-30 mins to Henderson to catch it.
A adjusment they could make to the trains is to run a slightly earlier train back to Britomart or West at about the time the game ends.
For example a 4 car train could have easily left at 9.15 PM full.
As happens when the home team play poorly like the Warriors did last night or the Kiwis did last year a lot of people leave early meaning things get pretty busy outside the stadium.
Is the split station set-up now a permanent strategy for all matches at Eden Park? Or is there some sort of long term plan to provide Kingsland station with enough capacity to move punters both ways after the RWC?
It probably depends on the crowd size Rene, presumably any near capacity crowd will need the same RWC strategy.
Rene/Nick
I suspect it will be in place for most games - even for smaller crowds of say 20,000.
But the problem is that it only really works for Saturday games. I don’t see how they can ruin the “network” for a Friday night game.
I just checked and the first Friday match at Eden Park is on 20 May, Blues vs. Stormers, 7.35pm kick off. (Unless the Crusaders play a home match at Eden Park earlier.) It will be very interesting to see how they will manage this.
I know there is no space at Kingsland for a third platform, but do we have space between Kingsland and Morningside to fit a third line in? They should then be able to squeeze a regular service through, in between the trains that are being stabled during the match on the other two lines?
GJA, a third track for stabling looks feasible between Morningside and Kingsland.
If they were really committed they could have built a short branch over Sandringham Rd to a dedicated four-platform event station on the corner of the No.2 oval.
The height difference between the line and Sandringham Rd in the vicinity of the Mobil station would have made this very straight forward.
Another option would have been to use the site of the Mobil station and the adjacent house.
GJA - I think the other issue is if they use both tracks from Bitomart, then they also don’t run southern line up and out to EP - which seems silly for local games.
Nick R - that’s going back to the old south car park tram terminus:) where they used to clear 60,000 from the ground very quickly…..