After some last-ditch efforts to save the Newmarket West station, it appears as though today the station is being demolished. From Auckland Trains:
The debate about Kingdon continues this morning.
A dismayed ARC chairman Mike Lee, who had made a last minute plea for talks on the issue, called it “stupidity” and said: “As the saying goes ‘worse than a crime – a mistake.’”
And Campaign for Better Transport spokesman, Jon Reeves, told of the news, said: “And that was that. And in a few years time ATA (ex ARTA) will suggest a station for direct west services…..”
The debate is now over in that, by the end of today or lunchtime tomorrow, Kingdon St will be no more.
I have analysed this debate in detail previously, and come to the conclusion that keeping a station open at Kingdon Street is probably not worth it. However, I would also say that it seems a bit strange to actually demolish the station. Why not have it as a back-up? Or leave it open so that some services can go directly to Britomart, only stopping here?
I suppose it just seems strange to actually demolish a piece of rail infrastructure. And it will be annoying having to return to the bad old days of turning the trains around at Newmarket.
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My reading somewhere was that it would cost a fair bit of money (a million or so) to make it permanent and this money is best spent elsewhere.
That’s true RTC. I think the station wasn’t built to a particularly high standard because it was only ever meant to be temporary (not just in terms of access at its eastern end, but in terms of everything).
It wouldn’t have cost anything to keep it temporarily and run a few peak services stopping there and so determining what sort of demand there was.
@Ian – if it was built to be temporary it is quite possible that resource consents don’t allow it to remain longer. Also, I’d rather see the 1 million spent on the northern access to the New Market station which would make one of the entrances to the new station only around 100 metres from the temporary Kingdon street one. This would be better money spent than a confusing temporary station.
Of course the main issue is not the location but more that trains are going to have to back out of Newmarket again. Perhaps once Grafton is built some trains that run during peak times can avoid Newmarket altogether i.e. The morning express would go from New Lynn to Grafton then go direct to Britomart
I don’t necessarily think that consenting would have been the issue with the station. I think it’s more along the lines of it being built out of materials not designed to last that long, and being of insufficient length for future trains. There are also issues relating to how to put up the wires for electrification with the station still being there.
Siiiiiiigh. Perhaps rtc and Josh can explain:
1) why extending resource consents would be difficult, especially when surrounding businesses are keen to keep Kingdon St station
2) how the Kingdon St station materials & construction methods are any different to those used bulding recent stations like Sylvia Park or Glen Innes? (clue: they’re not)
3) how electrification wiring is a problem at Kingdon St, which is the same kind of 2 side platforms that you get at the new Avondale station being built, at Middlemore, at Panmure (which – like Kingdon St – is sandwiched between road overbridges).
When that’s done, you can explain to us the great benefits of reversing all West trains into the new Newmarket platforms. Oh, the joy!
Happy new year 😉
@ Matt L – direct running of West trains to Grafton (Park Rd) would make a very long gap between Britomart & Grafton, and means Westies wanting to go to Newmarket or transfer to South trains have a long walk (c. 800m) from Grafton station to new Newmarket station/area.
The solution is to keep/rebuild Kingdon St as the permanent Newmarket West station, linked by subway to the new Newmarket platforms behind Broadway. But that makes the gap between Kingdon St and Grafton stations very short – just a few hundred metres!
Which raises the question – why is Boston Rd being closed and shifted to Grafton? Supposedly to be closer to Auckland Hospital/Domain for passengers, and to be an interchange with the new Link bus lanes between Newmarket & CBD via Park Rd.
But if you stand under SH1 on the Khyber Pass on-offramps junction, beside Boston Rd station, you will see that walking from Boston Rd platforms North along Claremont St and Park Ave is a far flatter and same distance route.
That is, Grafton station, because it is slightly lower down Khyber Pass, requires you to walk up the steep Park Rd section to the junction with Carlton Gore Rd before it flattens off. So Grafton station is worse from a pedestrian/cyclist perspective than Boston Rd.
Sadly, few transport planners at Ontrack/Veolia/ARTA seem to realise the old stations were mostly well placed (and evenly spaced). Messing with the inter-station spacing creates havoc, often for dubious ‘benefits’ like the steeper walk to the hospital.
I guess they figured it was cheaper over the long run to demolish the station than pay the maintanance of keeping it as a “surplus” station…
Bob, Grafton give a direct straight walk to the hospitals along a recently rebuilt road with improved pedestrian amenity that is 100m shorter than going up the back streets from Boston Rd, and it also negates the need to cross Kyhber Pass Rd. Boston Road was a horrible place under a motorway next to a prison in an industrial zone. Moving it 350m along places it in a nicer location closer to where passengers want to go with much better conenctvity. Grafton also give much better access to the brewery site which is about to be re-developed. And it is not just ‘link bus lanes’ it will interface directly with, almost every bus from the south and east of Auckland will pass through the new central connector busway. This kind of connectivity is essential to have a public transport system than goes beyond just servicing peak hour commuters to downtown.
The wiring issue has nothing to do with the arrangement of the platforms (!) it has to do with the clearances of the two road bridges and the grade of the climb between them. The track lowering, wiring design and bridge rebuilds were designed for only one station in Newmarket, to go and stick another station in the middle of the design would require the bridges and track lowering to be done all over again.
There will be no reversing of trains into Newmarket, the trains all have cabs at either end. Like any modern suburban rail system the trains are designed to run in both directions, they have no reverse. Yes western trains will have to change direction at Newmarket, but so what, the time effects are minimal and the benefits of having a single Newmarket station for connections are manifold. The old three point turn is long gone.
I’ll ask you this then, what is the benefit of having two stations in Newmarket with platforms only 250m apart and entrances only 90m apart?!
-So a person wanting to catch the next train to Britomart has to gamble on which station a train will get to next, effectively halving the frequency of trains through Newmarket? Likewise going the other way, there might be a train in five minutes but you’d have to sit for twenty to get the one going your way. Why not have them all go the same way?
-So that transfers between the western and southern lines are totally uncoordinatable, as people have to walk five or ten minutes through central newmarket to connect?
-So half the people going to Newmarket can be dumped at a set of basic platforms in a back street with no amenities, while a brand new world class interchange station sits underused a few hundred metres away?
-So half the passengers can go via a station with no opportunity for bus connections and very poor pedestrian links?
Bob, I would suggest your thinking to much about the old commuter rail system that existed just to shuttle a few CBD workers who lived withing walking distance of a suburban station into town each morning and send them home again in the evening. The public transport planners that you have such little faith in are building a proper transportation system where it is just as easy to travel to a variety of places at a variety of times. For this to work they need simple and straightforward service patterns, good connections between train lines and between buses and trains, and good stations with decent facilities that are well connected to the areas they serve.
Having two separate, uncoordinated stations in Newmarket a few hundred metres away from each other would be a massive step backwards for achieving a useful public transport system.
@Bob – 1. My suggestion was only for a few trains in the peak so if you had a south connection you just catch one that does stop at Newmaket, as a westie who used to swap trains at Newmarket I hated the walk between stations. Broadway was filled with cars and noisy buses, there wasn’t shelter the whole way meaning you can get quite wet if it rains and often you would get held up just enough at waiting to cross at lights that you would turn up to the other station to find your connecting train just pulling out of the station. Also stopping at Grafton will link into the buses using the central connector and with intergrated ticketing it shouldn’t cost any extra to jump on a bus for a few hunred meters if you are to lazy to up or down Khyber Pass.
2. I believe there are plans to build something above the triangle, if this were to happen a Northern entrance to the station could be easily built giveing good access to business in that part of Newmaket, that would also have the benefit of being used by Southern line passengers as well.
3. Park Rd is hardly steep plus doesn’t require you to cross Khyber pass which isn’t very nice at the best of times (I used to do it daily around where the staitions are when I lived in the area).
4. It wasn’t constructed anywhere near to the level of the new stations you mentioned, the concrete wasn’t even laid smoothly plus had ugly scaffolding for stairs. The cost of bringing it up to the standard of the newer platforms when there will be two good stations nearby is probably part of the issue.
5. The only real issue I have is the time its going to take for the driver to change ends. At the end of the day this could be solved by building the CBD Tunnel and having western trains head into the city first before heading south to Newmarket (as pointed out on this website in the past). I would rather the efforts of people like Mike Lee go into getting this built as a long term solution rather than trying to keep a station like Kingdon St
I actually think it would have been good to keep the station for the odd express service. However, if that was going to require serious money to make the station permanent I think the priorities are elsewhere.
I guess the real debate is about what work is really necessary to make the station permanent.
Just to keep the debate up (even if the station is already done and operating) … why wasn’t the Newmarket station put 200m north of where it is at the moment? like on top of the crossing?
I see the point of being able to go south from the west without going to Britomart even though at the moment the timetables are so out of synch that you actually get to connect south if your train is delayed. But that could have been achieved without reversing the trains plus adding connectivity to the northern end of Broadway.
“Yes western trains will have to change direction at Newmarket, but so what, the time effects are minimal”
I’d ask “define minimal” because if before it took 10min to go from Kendon to Britomart and it now takes 15 that is a 50% increase … hardly minimal .. and if you put in numbers like how many people are experiencing that extended commuting and how much time is valued, and also the fact that you have trains crossing tracks which adds to the potential things that can go wrong the costs start to add up…
Various reasons, the main ones being the steep grade of the track coming out of the Parnell tunnel and the fact that a station in that location has poor access and is quite remote in relation to the Newmarket main street, shopping/business precinct and residential growth areas. To clear the junction the platforms would be more like 350m further north of where they are now, so thats quite a bit further away from the main drag. If you look at the northern location on Google Maps you can see roughly half of the potential catchment is taken up by (empty and un-developable) Newmarket Park, where as in the location it is now the catchment is roughly 50% business district, 50% high density housing.