Subscribe to RSSHistoric Manukau Rail Link Construction Starts Today
It’s another important chapter today in Auckland’s rail history.
The construction officially begins for the Manukau rail link and station.
This is the first extension of the Auckland rail network since the eastern line in 1930.
The 2km section of new track will link Davies Ave in Manukau City with the Southern railway line at Puhinui. The track will run under Lambie Drive and Plunket Ave and across Hayman Park. Part of the rail link will run inside a 300m trench beginning at Lambie Dr and finishing at Davies Ave. It will be 7m deep at its deepest point and 18m wide at its widest. 47,000 m3 of silty Puketoka sands will be excavated in total.
Three parties are involved in the development. Kiwirail’s job is to build the rail link and trench. ARTA is building the station inside the trench. Manukau city council is responsible for the bus interchange at Davies Ave.
The new station will open in the first half of 2011. Work on the 2km of rail infrastructure underpinning them has already begun and will finish next year.
The Manukau mayor, Len Brown, announced last week that the Manukau Institute of technology will open a new campus adjacent to the new station.The only disappointment for some is that the station didn’t make it as far as Westfield’s shopping centre.
The minister of transport, Steven Joyce, was officiating at a ceremony to mark the event.
Meanwhile Southern line commuter William M gives this update on the Wiri-Manukau Branch Line work to date:
Points have been installed on both the UP and DOWN main lines to shunt traffic into what will be the new line. The old track that was removed is sitting by the rails. More ballast has been installed beside the down line toward the siding that runs under the Wiri Station Road bridge.
There is a temporary speed restriction (TSR) between Homai and Puhinui at 35km/h.
Also, it appears new signals have sprung up by my place at Tironui Station! Hoorah! We had the old halogens in since Tironui Station was first built. Now we have proper LED-type signals. Certainly brighter
at night!
Thanks for the update William.
5 Comments
Good to hear some positive news about Auckland rail. It will be interesting to see how much this and the Onehunga line add to patronage.
why does this line fall short of the shopping centre? sounds pointless to me, it should have gone under the shopping centre, under the motorway then resurfaced and gone all the way out to botney downs… another 1/2 pie effort
Carl
Good question.
They needed Westfield to cough up some money to get there but they didnt.
Sylvia Park shopping centre actually funded a train station when they built their centre and its reaping huge rewards.
very disappointing indeed.
Silvia Park was a new development, so they could get development contributions, or make them do things in lieu.
Westfield Manukau is an existing development, so making them pay for a new train station would have been rather difficult. Sure, Westfield would have profited from it a little more than they will now, but still, you can’t really expect private, existing businesses to pay for these things above their normal rates. I mean I’m not very libertarian regarding commercial entities in general, but that would be weird and at least somewhat wrong.
@ingolfson true but Sylvia has found commercial benefits from people being able to easily catch trains to their shopping centre so in dollars and cents terms it works. People may decide instead to train to rival manukau if they could easily.