Subscribe to RSSCarpark Replaces Old Bus Space
New Lynn’s old bus station is no more.
It got partly wiped out when the new transport hub opened a year ago – and on that day Waitakere deputy Mayor Penny Hulse couldn’t resist getting in a digger to give it a hard nudge.
Now she has got back in drove a digger to complete the complete demolition of New Lynn’s old bus station, and adjacent properties, making way for a car park.
NEW LYNN: Penny Hulse demolishes old bus station
The new development, part of the continuing regeneration of New Lynn- is being jointly developed by Infratil and includes a four-level, 300-space public parking building.
The demolition started a year ago
The 7000 square metres of commercial floor space also has a three-level medical centre while the ground floor will feature shops.
The old bus depot was demolished a year old when the transport hub opened
The new development will sit alongside Auckland Transport’s redevelopment of the McCrae Way area behind the New Lynn War Memorial Library, Totara Ave and the Great North Road shops.
The Totara Ave shared space
The development is a joint venture between Auckland Council and Infratil Infrastructure Property Ltd.
This is an earlier graphic of the development.
An artists impression of Merchant Quarter
It will be completed in a year’s time.
The new Clark St overbridge
The Totara Ave shared space and the Clark St extension are also part of the changes around there.
One thing is for sure.
The old bus terminal will not be missed.
This is the old New Lynn bus terminal
15 Comments
At least a car parking building is less space intensive than trying to accommodate those parks at ground level meaning more area can be developed.
Also my understanding of McCrae Way is that it is to be a shared space
http://www.aucklandtransport.govt.nz/improving-transport/current-projects/Road/Documents/McCrae%20Way%20Development%20consultation.pdf
Or they could do as in Switzerland, most carparks are underground. This leaves ground level for shops, upperlevels for offices/apartments.
@jon r ,
Although these car parks are mostly a by-product of building laws introduced in the ’60s and ’70s requiring every newly constructed building to have a nuclear shelter that is capable of withstanding a blast from a detonation at a 700m distance, - thus most are underground.
Jon - Its not always practical to have underground carparks, in the case of New Lynn the whole area is built on clay which can make it extremely difficult/costly to build underground structures. In the case of the rail trench they had use very specialist techniques and machinery not used here before (although VPT used the same method) but I can’t see that being practical for a car park.
Why build new car parks AT ALL? Don’t give me the park & ride please - this is supposed to be a new, thriving town centre. But south of the station, it feels a bit like at grade motorways…
I could see the “car park buildings use of less space” argument. But I don’t see any car parks being removed to make up for the new ones.
@max, Im pretty sure they are not for park and ride. I think some of the car parks are going to be for the apartments, and others for the commercial area (cinema etc).
Max - New Lynn is getting some serious investment in part to encourage a lot of growth, as much as we may want it to we are not going to be able to accommodate all of that growth through increased use of PT, walking or cycling. By providing a car parking building then businesses don’t need to which should hopefully make development easier.
Also some car parks are being lost as part of the Mcrae Way development, in total there is a net loss of about 40 car parks
Found myself on the western line today so I hopped out at New Lynn to check it out. Lovely new station, as we know, but an astonishing amount of new wide roads, and I couldn’t help noticing the electronic bus sign listing the next three bus destinations: Glen Eden, Henderson, and Swanson. All on the rail line. We are still very much taking tentative steps towards real coordination of transport planning and hardly none at restricting endless car use. The new multilevel car park is to be right between the transport centre and the mall and will increase the numbers of vehicle movements into the very area they seem to be trying humanise. If this is the flagship of transport led development then it is still overwelmingly auto-centric.
No doubt the property owners fought any moves to cut down on either car privilege or parking numbers. And I suppose with 1/2 hour frequencies on the rail line and no real co-ordination with buses perhaps it isn’t ready yet to carry the loads. Let’s hope this gradual approach can work, but those wide roads won’t be undone anytime soon and nor will we ever get the money back that has been lavished on them.
@Patrick - this always was a reading project with some PT thrown in because it would help car movements. No excuse for what is a pretty poor overall outcome except for the station but that’s the reality in Auckland.
Must say I hated crossing the road from the new NL station to go across to the side with BK on it. Such a wide road is really unpedistrian friendly.
All AKL traffic engineers should be fired and some from Cont. Europe brought in.
Are all our traffic engineers from the UK or USA or something?
Yup. traffic engineers with their heads up their arses and their arses in about 1960. It seems the only way to get a shared space is to build a huge and expensive bypass, thereby undermining any traffic restriction work that the shared street way have done, so all it really is is a council funded mall extension.
New Lynn is not yet a real neighbourhood; it is an isolated shopping mall on the late 20th century model. That there is a train station near it is good, and now there will be some trees and part of the mall is external, ok. But until there are a couple of big apartment blocks within the centre, and not just car parks it, will not be a ‘livable’ centre. Real locals would also make the shops of all kinds much more viable.
Will this happen? Does the council work with developers in this way?
“we are not going to be able to accommodate all of that growth through increased use of PT, walking or cycling. ”
Then we are doing it wrong.
“All AKL traffic engineers should be fired and some from Cont. Europe brought in.”
Am I allowed to stay, being from there originally, then? What about all the Kiwi engineers who’d want to do better, but are being blocked all the time, while their more roading-centric fellows get encouraged by the system?
Don’t whinge about the engineers all the time - they build what the funding and the politicians allows them to build. With a transport funding regime that screams “ROADS, ROADS, ROADS”, and then (for alibi function) whispers “cycleways and footpaths”, and with most politicians and voters afraid of more significant changes, you get what you choose.
Like blaming the policeman because you got robbed, you are directing at least a big part of your ire at the wrong people. There’s something happening in two weeks, where you could make a change, but “you” won’t, from the looks of it.
I’ll be doing my bit Max. Let us hope that the rest of Auckland is just as fed up with HAVING to take a car everywhere.
New Lynn is looking really good nowadays, starting to see alot more foot traffic in the different areas, only thing I think might not be so good is a great big car park building on the sunny side of the flash new transport centre, might make it dark and dingy again.