Subscribe to RSSAll Aboard For The Manukau Rail Link
Work is starting on Auckland’s first new rail route to be built since the Eastern line in 1930. Manukau City’s new Hayman Park rail and bus transport hub will become one of the country’s busiest stations, competing with Newmarket for the second-highest number of train passengers after Britomart.
Trains will start operating in about 18 months.
The 1.8km section of new track will link Davies Ave in Manukau City with the Southern railway line at Wiri. The track will run under Lambie Drive and Plunket Ave and across Hayman Park. The $50m project will be compatible for the upcoming electrification. The new track will run alongside Transit’s SH20 link with SH1, and will be mostly double-tracked.
As preparation work gets underway with construction proper next month, Manukau Institute of Technology was announcing that a tertiary campus is planned for the same site as the rail station which is great news for students in South Auckland.
Trains stop outside Sylvia Park mall but the centre put up money for it
Manukau Mayor Les Brown says he has become a big fan of the Project Dart Manukau rail proposal but admits to earlier concerns:
“The problem that I had with the rail spur from the main truck line was two-fold. Firstly, in the initial years I was not convinced rail was a better option than a strong enhancement of our bus services. I wasn’t sure if rail would deliver the numbers necessary to justify it economically. Secondly I felt the rail spur should enter into the northern side of the city centre, rather than where we’ve finally decided in the south.
Over the years I reconciled myself to the fact that our council, whatever its configuration, was going to support the rail line. And I’ve certainly reconciled myself to the arguments relating to it.
In the last three years, we’ve seen a 300 to 400 per cent increase in patronage on the southern rail line with a lot of scope for even further quantum shifts in numbers.
I’ve also accepted that the rail station site at the south of the city centre at Hayman Park is a starting point for a greater expansion of the rail network. It could eventually be extended out through the eastern part of the city into Botany, Pakuranga and then back into Panmure.
The train and bus station is due to open in late 2010. The first stage of the planned tertiary campus is likely to be open to its first students in the first semester of 2012.The campus and station will attract a lot more people to the city centre and help kickstart further investment.”
Last year there was considerable debate about why the train was not going to stop right outside the Manukau City Centre but no-one would front up with the extra millions to extend it. The council argued it was a train and bus hub and if anyone needed a bus somewhere there would be no more than 50 metres to walk between buses and trains.
MAP: Ontrack
4 Comments
Len Brown is a good mayor. I live in Mangere & will vote for him as the new supermayor.Can’t wait 4 the trains.
At last some welcome train news for Auckland. 18 months doesn’t sound too far away. Pity it won’t go to Manukau Westfield. I like getting off the train at Sylvia and the mall is right there. I like the photo of Sylvia. I have seen that view so often.
Now that’s what I want to hear. A pity it’s not part of the AMETI project.
Very good news, it would have been better if it went all the way to Westfield but than again something is better than nothing. Congratulations on your new look.