Just when we were looking forward to the rail system being fully operational tomorrow for the first time this year, it seems like something’s thrown a spanner in the works. This is the latest update from ARTA:
As at 10:15pm Sunday 17 January 2010: As a result of unexpected technical difficulties at Newmarket, train services across the region will be operating to a revised timetable on Monday 18 January 2010.
Summary details of revised timetables and affected services are below. Please refer to the special holiday timetables for details of where railbus replacement services have been extended.
Southern and Eastern lines: Special holiday timetables will continue for all train services to and from Pukekohe/Papakura via the Eastern line and on railbus replacement services between Otahuhu and Britomart (via Newmarket South).
For departures from Newmarket see section below.
Western line: Train services will operate from Waitakere/Swanson to Newmarket approximately every 30 minutes and will be available between 6.00am and 6.30pm only. If you are travelling to Britomart you will need to transfer to a shuttle train service at the new Newmarket station or to a rail bus outside Westfield 277 (Broadway).
In addition to these rail services, rail bus replacement services will continue to operate as per the special holiday timetable.
For departures from Newmarket, see section below.
Departures from Newmarket station:
· If you are heading West, take one of the half hourly trains from the new Newmarket station (until 6.30pm). Alternatively you can take the railbus from the Newmarket West railbus stop (Carlton Gore Rd).
· If you are arriving from the West and heading to Britomart, at Newmarket either transfer to a limited shuttle train service from the new station OR transfer to a rail bus from outside Westfield 277 (Broadway).
· If you are heading South, take the railbus from the stop opposite Westfield 277 (Broadway).
· If you are in Newmarket and heading to Britomart, go either to the new station for limited shuttle train services, or to the railbus stop outside Westfield 277 (Broadway) or the rail bus stop in Carlton Gore Rd.
Further updates will appear when available.
ARTA, Veolia Transport and KiwiRail apologise for the inconvenience this will cause
When was the last time the Harbour Bridge wasn’t running at full capacity for peak hour because the overnight roadworks had led to “unforeseen difficulties?” Oh that’s right, never. Why is it just our public transport system that sucks?
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Why doesn’t the western line just use kingdon st – ahh that’s right we demo’d it hahaha
Yea the thing with motorways is we don’t have signal failures to stuff us up cause there is no signals. Unfortunate but I think we do need to be thankful they are taking no risks with safety.
I would have thought they would have been able to test the signals throughout the christmas break.
But do remember they did have problems with the toll road, so motorways don’t always open without a hitch either.
While I haven’t exactly advocated for the retention of the Newmarket West station, it is highly ironic for it to be needed on the VERY FIRST DAY the western line operates after its demolition.
Would having had Kingdon street actually have helped here? I’m not so sure.
It would have allowed them to focus on getting that part of the junction working without affecting services. I guess Mike Lee is thinking to himself I told you so right now
As I said on another forum…..
“I would suggest that Josh and the other denigrators go personally to each and every one of the signal’s techs and apologise on bended knees (on the ballast so it really hurts) for calling them “lethargic”.
It really annoys me when the armchair operators on this board run down the professional railwaymen and women that work all hours of the day and night, especially at weekends, to get the job done.
Had a good time off guys?
The railwaymen didn’t!”
It’s bad PR, true. But then, there’s been worse PR before for other big projects. In the future, (I hope and trust) that this will be the stuff of summaries like “While there were some initial opening difficulties, the new Newmarket Train Station soon became a symbol of rejuvenated rail transport in Auckland.”
In other words – things stuff up. It happens. Whether or not the end product is a lot better than what was there is what is important.
Chris, I do not doubt that all workers did their best. The point of my critique is to help get away from an acceptance of mediocrity when it comes to public transport in Auckland. Overseas cities such as London and Madrid completely rebuild lines and signalling systems without any closedown, yet in Auckland we not only have to shut down the system, but also when it’s time to get things going again we have not been organised enough to get it right.
Tokyo’s rail system shifts millions of people per day yet I don’t see them having the signalling failures of Auckland. Why can’t we be as good as that?
Because in tokyo they have around 20 different lines (maybe exageration or underexageration?) entering tokyo station alone, on different levels, there are other junctions that allow them to mitigate the problem, so commuters would hardley even know there was a problem.
In Auckland there is no-way our rail system is as advance as theirs, and nor should it. Also the shut down the whole rail system not only for Newmarkets junction but also for the other improvements preparing for electrification.
I think the point i’m trying to make is, your being a bit hard. I,ve been on a melbourne train where we had to wait for half an hour stuck behind a train that was broken down in the station before they transfered us to another platform – the platform they transfered us to had no trains for the whole period we were stuck there – and there was no other train using the tracks we had to use to get there either (for that period). So we are not the only one’s who make f**k-ups. BTW at the time it was 42 degrees outside and no better in the train.
Chris – Other than the stats I haven’t had a break either but on topic for me the point is we all know construction projects can run into problems that delay them. If they had planned it better then this piece of work would have been completed last week giving them a few days to test and fix any errors the popped up rather than leaving such a critical piece of work to the last minute and just hoping it will all work correctly. It is not the workmen’s fault, it is the management and planners working on the project.
At the end of the day if it is just going to be 1 extra day it is annoying but manageable but if its going to be 2,3,4 or even an extra week of work to sort then that is unacceptable and heads need to roll. We are never going to get more people using the train if they keep reading stories about how there are issues with the system.
Sadly I think that we will continue seeing signalling issues until electrification is completed which is 3-4 years away
You’re right Matt, it is those who plan and manage this kind of project who need to do better.
I’m not saying we shouldn’t shut down the system over summer, and in fact I think it’s a great idea to concentrate getting work done over a shorter period of disruption than spreading it out over every weekend, for example. It’s just very very disappointing to see fancy new stuff failing already at Newmarket.
“Chris, I do not doubt that all workers did their best. The point of my critique is to help get away from an acceptance of mediocrity when it comes to public transport in Auckland. Overseas cities such as London and Madrid completely rebuild lines and signalling systems without any closedown”
On the CBT board you will see the comments from John, the signaller from Salisbury PSB, detailing overruns – one by up to a month – expreienced by Newtork Rail/Railtrack in dear old Blighty.
I have long been an advocate of a 3-6 month shutdown to get ALL the track/signalling issues resolved!
There are often delays and disruptions on the roads. Remember Greenlane intersection? I think that project was finished about nine months later than it was supposed to be, and the cost exceeded the budget by millions.
The officials who run the roads are just as incompetent as those who run our public transport!
Chris – I would have also been keen to see a longer period of shutdown but get all the work sorted approach but I think we are to far down the track (excuse the pun) now. This would have been something worthwhile when we started project dart, in a way it is the same analogy as taking off a sticking plaster, you can do if fast with a little bit of pain that quickly goes away or you can slowly tear it off and feel that pain for longer. I imagine the hardest thing with any infrastructure project is trying to do the work while also having to maintain existing services of some kind.
In NZ it seems all to common that we get concerned with creating a to big of an inconvenience some people for a few months but are happy to subject them to smaller inconveniences for years instead. In the case of the Western line, I wonder how many people we have scared off ever using the train again after all the faults and issues we have had related to duplication.
The only thing I can think is that any new rail lines in Auckland should be easier as we won’t have to work in with existing services apart from where they join the existing network.
Admin: “Overseas cities such as London and Madrid completely rebuild lines and signalling systems without any closedown”
You’ve not ever heard of the East London Line then. All (or most?) of it was shut between 1995 and 1998, and since 2007 for upgrades.
Ah yes perhaps London is not the best example. Madrid is an interesting one though, as they have managed to completely resignal Metro lines while keeping the trains running on normal timetables. Pretty impressive.
It all depends on how much you want to spend. If you have a system that runs between, say, 5am and 1am then you only have 4 hours to shut down the system, work on it, then restart the system. That means 2 hours working time available in the middle of the night when you need to pay at least double time to get workers out of their beds. Projects can drag on for years and cost a fortune.
Depending on the amount of passengers using the line, it might be cheaper to shut it for a period and lay on replacement buses. And if it is cheaper, then it is easier to justify and therefore more likely to happen.
You couldn’t do this for the LU Central Line, but it probably isn’t a problem in Auckland. Especially in January when most normal people are at the beach.
Yeah London’s going to have fun when they resignal the Piccadilly Line. They can’t really close that line down at weekends, like they’ve done with others such as the Jubilee Line.
london is a good example, they are delivering a massive amount of change with minimal disruption on most lines. http://www.tfl.gov.uk/corporate/projectsandschemes/10127.aspx. On the victoria line they replaced the track and signalling in the central section by closing the line at 10pm on week days.
The east london line closure is for a long time, but they are changing it from an underground line to overground mainline standards, so you couldn’t run trains along it even if you did stop work during the day. The new line is also about 4 times bigger than the old line, so it’s a massive piece of work compared to just opening a new station. As for testing, they have been running test trains on completed sections for 6 months before it opens.
Also, why can’t they close down the piccadilly line at weekends? generally they’ll only close the sections they are working on each weekend, and lay on a replacement bus service. Worked OK when they closed the heathrow section to extend it to terminal 5.
I have heard the Piccadilly Line being called London’s central artery on the weekends. It links a lot of shopping areas, a lot of football stadiums, and generally a lot of places that people travel to on the weekend.
There has actually been a lot of annoyance with the disruption to London’s underground as part of their upgrades (ha, they think they’ve got it bad, they should come here!) I think a formal inquiry looked into how things could be improved, and how Madrid managed to run normal services while doing similar improvements.
The thing about the piccadilly line is, if you look at the map, it’s routes are pretty well covered by all the other lines. Through the central zones it’s just adding more capacity and convenience of no change for a few point to point links.
So covent garden to south kengsington for example ( 2 shopping districts i picked at random)it’s 6 stops on the piccadilly, or if that was closed a 200m walk to leister square and 7 stops on the northen and circle/district line with a change at embankment. Not the end of the world as, unlike auckland, you’ll only be waiting a couple of mins for the change 🙂 maybe 10 mins extra overall ( 5 mins for the walk, 3 mins for the wait, 2 mins for the extra stop).
And rail replacement busses will work pretty well for the outer zones.
the advantage of having such a dense and overlappting PT network. Something auckland can only acheive with busses, bring back the trams i say!