Auckland University and AUT are probably two of the biggest drawcards for public transport users in the CBD. I certainly know from catching New North Road and Sandringham Road buses that at least 50% of the bus passengers seemed to always get off at the two university stops on Symonds Street. However, somewhat unfortunately, both the university and AUT are relatively poorly served by the rail system.
Furthermore, even with the proposed upgrades to Auckland’s rail system over the next few decades, the university will continue to be – somewhat ironically considering the number of public transport users – something of a hole in terms of accessibility to rail. This is shown in the map below, which identifies all existing and potentially proposed railway stations in central Auckland once the CBD rail tunnel is completed and a Parnell station opened (more on that soon):
The area outlined in red is roughly the area of the CBD covered by Auckland University and AUT, so as you can see there’s an unfortunate irony that it generally misses being particularly well accessible from any of the proposed future stations.
At the moment, the university is around a 1km walk from Britomart – although even that walk requires one to take a fairly unusual path, exiting from the eastern end of Britomart and then going up the relatively little known Emily Place (see below). A more ‘conventional’ path of going up Queen Street and then up Victoria Street before trekking through Albert Park would probably be significantly longer again. 
I’m sure a fairly decent number of university students do use the train system – particularly from areas served by the eastern line as their bus alternative wouldn’t generally travel too much closer to the university than the train does. The same is probably true for people west of New Lynn on the Western Line. However, what poor rail access to the university for passengers on the inner part of the Western Line does is mean that New North Road buses need to be run at pretty high frequencies – even though they operate almost completely parallel to the Western Line. Not the most efficient use of resources. I imagine the same is true for Great South Road buses that parallel the Southern Line.
As shown in the first map, a Parnell Station has been proposed for a number of years now – both to serve the local area and also as a potential university stop. While there are competing reasons for locating the station at various points between the Parnell Rise overbridge and the Parnell Tunnel, if we look at the issue from a “how good will it be as a university station?” perspective, the most recent proposed location around Cheshire Street seems to actually be around 100m further from Auckland University than Britomart is at the moment – so therefore is very unlikely to play much of a role as a potential university train station. This is particularly the case as some of the walk appears to be pretty dangerous around the edge of the domain, while it would also involve getting across SH16:
One possible alternative is to look at locating the Parnell station as close to the Parnell Rise overbridge as possible, and therefore as close to the university as possible. This is shown in the map below:
As noted in the map above, for this option to really work some sort of raised pedestrian bridge above SH16 would be necessary – perhaps something similar to what has been built across the Northern Motorway to link Akoranga busway station with the AUT Akoranga Campus.
However, there are still a number of questions with this option that I don’t actually have the answers for, such as: would it really be worth spending a fairly large amount of money on a new station and a pedestrian overbridge to save 300m over the current Britomart-university distance? Would it actually be acceptable to put a pedestrian bridge across Grafton Gully there? Would Parnell benefit more from having the station located further south, and if so does the benefit to creating a semi-university station outweigh the cost of having a non-ideally located Parnell station?
Many questions to ponder, but I do think it’s something worth thinking about. It’s unlikely we’ll ever be able to locate a train station closer to the university than this, so it would be interesting to look at what the benefits would be – a big benefit being the pressure taken off New North Road and Great South Road bus services so that their resources can be redirected to areas where buses don’t simply duplicate the railway line.
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The Auckland University travel plan specifically mentioned building an overbridge across Grafton Gully to access a future Parnell station – pretty much as you describe. By putting up 700,000 for the walkway the ACC seem to be more interested in politicking as I am not aware than ARTA have any plans nor any money to build a Parnell station any time soon. I too think a station at the bottom of the rise would be more ideal, it would better serve the University and would provide an alternative station to Vector Arena and the thousands of apartments and terraced housing that are directly between Vector Arena and the Parnell rise.
I would however, be happy either way, and also see a lot of potential in turning the Mainline steam buildings into a character signature station. Was there not also plans to relocate the old Newmarket station here as well?
Also, with integrated ticketing people going to/from the university will also have the option of catching a bus along the central connector between Britomart and Auckland Uni/AUT, which perhaps suggests siting the station closer to Parnell should be the main goal.
My question on this topic is why closer to Parnell, or rather, which bit of Parnell?
The Parnell mainstreet is a relatively small commercial area surrounded by low density single level housing. Housing that I assume has a historic overlay and isn’t going to ever be redeveloped.
This is why I favour the more northerly site, it still maintains access to the Parnell main street but it has much better access to the high density mixed use area around the Strand, and area that will see a lot more development in coming years. Add in the better access to the uni’s and you have a winner. Another thing to consider is that a station near Cheshire St will only ever be a walk up station for the main street, there is very limited potential for any kind of car access or bus interchange. One on Carlaw Park Ave/Heather St could have direct bus interchange opportunities on Parnell Rise or Carlaw Park Ave.
The development of the Mainline Steam sheds as some sort of transit-oriented-development is a good idea, but it is also one that would still work if the station was 200m further down the line.
The Strand area is also pretty poorly served by PT at this point, so providing better rail access would be a great step.
I expect that there would be a few uni students who would take the train to britomart then hop on the free bus which goes to the uni? I’m just assuming as I don’t often end up in the CBD during the working week.
I do see a number of uni students on the train in the mornings but probably not as many as there could be. I think the people who have done the initial planning of this station haven’t actually looked at the full picture and can only see one part of the equation. What they haven’t done is look at the topography of the area as doing would make it quite clear how their proposed site isn’t ideal. To get from the Mainline Steam site to Parnell road requires pedestrians to negotiate some narrow and steep streets, not ideal for people wanting to go there for shopping. There is also little other benefit to the with the exception of any redevelopment of the Mainline Steam building, the tracks here are also on more of a gradient than they are further north.
Having the station further north from around Heather St to Parnell Rise would give the benefit mentioned for uni students but I think would also be better for access to Parnell. Going via Heather St is an nicer walk and has the space to put in wide pedestrian friendly footpaths and shelter. It also allows for a lot of redevelopment along the street which would greatly extend the reach of the retail area. Lastly it is also only be about 250m from the end of the platform to Mainline steam and this would be at a fairly easy gradient.
Another option would be to place a station in the area around the Strand and another station as close to the Parnell tunnel as possible. This would ensure that you have are no more than 500 metres from a station in the entire section of track serviced by the loop. The Strand station would be useful to access Vector and the Parnell Station would be, with the addition of a new footpath through to Domain Drive would have easy access to the Museum. This might slow the system down but I think this would be a good tradeoff.
@Nick R: I would dispute the fact that Parnell is a relatively small commercial area. There are in fact quite a number of offices and apartments located along there. It might not be Newmarket but it would be larger than many other areas like Mt Albert or Avondale that are serviced by trains.
My personal preference is for a teleport machine in Britomart and at the Uni Library…
But the proposed Aotea 1 stop on the CBD tunnel (Queen street at Wellesley)
http://www.arta.co.nz/publications-projects/projects/cbd-rail-loop.html
would have a walk of around 600 metres to the library via streetside footpaths (even less cutting through Albert park)
This woudl appear to be as good or better than any proposed footbridge accessed Parnell station,
That diagram makes the newton and Mount Eden stations look pretty redundant.
@Joshua. Every student i knows that arrives by ferry prefers to walk to uni, than take the free bus. Walking takes a similar amount of time, and feels much better than being crammed onto that bus.
@Jeremy Harris. Perhaps an elevated automated people mover would be a more realistic option. If you designed the technology surely NYC to London would be more profitable ;). on a more serious note this prob would be a good location for the Skycabs test track is they ever have more luck getting funding. whizzing up the hill to uni at 70/80 km/h would be real nice, would also appeal to the ferry commuters.
@Joshua
Yes, there are alot of Uni students who take the free City Circuit bus from Britomart. So many that the bus often has to leave behind passengers, even the current 10 minute frequencies are not enough. As well as that it is just as fast to walk from Britomart to the Universities because of the length of time the bus takes to go up Queen Street. It would make sense if it was rerouted to use the central connector, hardly anybody uses the Vulcan Lane and Whitcoulls stops.
What exactly is the purpose of the free City Circuit bus?
I’m not surprised it’s not used to get to Vulcan Lane or Whitcoulls. Whenever I see the bus, it’s crammed full of students who can’t be bothered to walk up to university.
It’s hardly a good look for the tourist wanting to go to the Sky Tower either.
James – Having a station at the strand and at the Parnell tunnel would slow down the network to much without providing much benefit. Also a station at the tunnel would have almost nothing located around it so wouldn’t be well used and that is before you consider it is in an isolated gully, safety would be a big concern here, especially at night. A station as suggested by admin and I would have its northern end not that far from Vector.
Scott – I think the Mt Eden station would go as part of the CBD tunnel
Jarbury – is there any heritage reason that the Parnell rise bridge couldn’t be replaced?
Greenwelly: good point about the Aotea/Midtown station.
Matt: I really don’t know. There are certainly heritage issues here, and that is part of the reason why my post just asks for opinions. I don’t know what the answer is here, I just know that having a railway station with better uni access would be damn useful.
@ James – Possible gradient issues in that location too
The lower Parnell option would provide much better access to the business school (has the largest lecture theaters in the uni and the most students of any facility) than a mid city station.
@James B:
“@Nick R: I would dispute the fact that Parnell is a relatively small commercial area. There are in fact quite a number of offices and apartments located along there. It might not be Newmarket but it would be larger than many other areas like Mt Albert or Avondale that are serviced by trains.”
You missed my point there a little, I said the Parnell *main street* was a relatively small commercial area. There are indeed quite a number of offices and apartments in the Parnell area (and a lot of potetial for further development) but they are clustered around the Parnell Rise/Strand end.
The main street precinct is a relatively small residential/commercial strip, south of the old church the land either side is basically just low density historic housing. People in Parnell may shop and dine on the main street but most of them work and live further north. Another thing to consider at the more southerly sites is that half of the catchment falls in the domain (in particularly the fairly low use bush covered gully part of the domain, not the museum, playing fields etc).
Therefore the best location for Parnell residents and workers should be further north where ten times and many people live and work, but still in a place that can provide good access to the main street strip. In my opinion the ideal location is therefore the ‘sattelite dish’ site with connections to Carlaw Park Ave/Parnell Rise at one end of the platforms and Heather St at the other.
Would a potential solution be to move the Aotea and K Road stations a block or two to the east? Is the catchment gained to the east more useful than the catchment lost to the west?
That would be more or less impossible Obi, as it is the curve out of Britomart to run under Albert St is about as sharp as possible and the route must run under the road corridor to avoid building foundations and sub strata issues.
One thing to consider is that the Aotea station is likey to have an entrance at or very close to the interstection of Queen St and Wellesley St. This places the station entrance (if not the platform itself) within 500m of about half of the University of Auckland campus and almost all of the AUT campus.
If we take a line as the crow flies between Aotea station and the lower Parnell station site, the line is about 1100m long and bisects the University of Auckland campus in two. With both stations the U of A will be very well provided for. The business school, arts and human sciences buildings will be less than 500m from Parnell station, the Library, Quad, old arts, clocktower, science and maths buildings within 500m of an Aotea station entrance. Engineering and Architecture would fall between the two, but even then they would have only a 6-700m walk down Wellesley St to get to Aotea station (about a 6 to 8 minute walk).
Personally I think most students at either campus would use the Aotea station, but the Parnell station would be more useful to those that use the Southern Line (and all students until the CBD tunnel is built of course).
Agree the site nearer the Strand would be better. Would you be able to watch tennis from the pedestrian bridge? 🙂
Over the long term would it be possible to build a duplicate rail bridge over Stanley Street to near Churchill street which then entered a duplicate tunnel to Britomart? Could this allow a underground Uni station on the NE side of the university while resolving the capacity issues at Britomart and speeding up all Southern trains by removing the sharp bends in the track going around vector arena?
Are there any recent indications as to when Parnell station may be built? I remember someone was talking 2018.
Joe – It would have been ideal but they are now building a covered arena for the tennis. I also agree would be nice to remove the curves around Vector but I don’t see it happening any time soon. The cost of doing so would be to much for a savings it would bring, I’m also not sure going via Beach Rd would be the best option.
Nick: “as it is the curve out of Britomart to run under Albert St is about as sharp as possible and the route must run under the road corridor to avoid building foundations and sub strata issues”
How far down do the foundations go? Do you just have to avoid the foundations themselves, or do you have to avoid tunneling under the foundations just in case a tunnel collapse causes a building to topple over sideways 😉 ? I would have presumed the foundations would be anchored in to rock.
Looking at a map of London, bits of the JLE and most of the Victoria Line seem to be under buildings because I just don’t see any other way to connect up the stations. So it must be possible.
It’s fine as long as you go deep enough, Singapore is doing heaps of tunnelling under buildings at the moment for sewage/water purposes, they are just 10 stories down…
At the bottom end of the CBD the foundations are deeper than the tunnel would need to be, for example the tunnel out of Britomart must pass through (not under) the foundations of the old post office and the Westfield development opposite. Boring tunnels under buildings is definitely possible if you can go deep enough, in London they have two types of ‘tubes’, shallow level ones built by cut and cover under the roadway, and deep level bored tunnels that are much futher below.
In the case of Auckland the main issue is climbing fast enough to make it back to the surface at the Western line. Going deeper is pretty much out of the question.
Auckland CBD is a mix of a variety of rock and soil types plus a lot of the stuff around Britomart is reclaimed fill, unlike places like Sydney there isn’t a convenient slab of bedrock to anchor buildings to (or drive tunnels through).
Up near K Rd the tunnel is deep enough for building foundations to be less of a problem, and you’ll see the proposed alignment leaves the road corridor near Pitt St and takes a more or less direct line.
An escalator up the hill is not such an idiotic idea. Sure, it would be a pretty immense thing, but if connected to a good walking route, it could boost walking patronage from the surrounding suburbs or train stations by a good bit.
Unlikely to happen, though.
A series of escalators were built in Hong Kong. 800m long, 135m vertical climb, cost US$30m to build and a lot to operate. I assume tourists in Auckland would love it…
But what about the health benefits of making PT users climb up the hill to university? I wonder if they’ve been calculated?
There was a plan a while back to open up the old air raid shelter under the park as a sort of mall (including the tunnel that runs from Constitution Hill to the top of Victoria Street), with escalators up to Princes St and the uni. Apparently the main tunnel that starts behind the stone arch sculpture is big enough to drive a truck through. I imagine that would have seen a hell of a lot of foot traffic as students took the escalator between uni and town or Parnell.
I think I remember something similar cropped up when the idea of siting the national stadium at Carlaw Park was being thrown about.
http://archaeopedia.com/wiki/images/b/be/Composite_image_of_tunnel_systems.jpg
That sounds pretty crazy. Awesome crazy, but crazy all the same!
Won’t it be relatively close (if rather vertical) for people to walk straight out of Aotea station and up the hill to the uni? I would have thought this would be much closer than the current distance from Britomart to the uni.
Also, what about the new proposed cycleway from the Domain to uni. Won’t this make life much easier for your rail pedestrian.
I think so Lucy, once Aotea is open I’d expect that to capture almost all rail traffic to the unis. The station would be basically on the doorstep of AUT (about 4mins walk from their quad) and only a few more minutes to most of the U of A campus.
The proposed cycleway will cross alongside the Wellesley St bridge if I remember right, so it’s pretty out of the way to get to any rail station.
@ Jeremy – I want a Tardis!
@ Nick R – ok, I didn’t realize the cycleway would be along Wellesley Street…Although I guess it has to be unless they built a massive bridge spanning Grafton Gulley. That’s a shame. I wouldn’t cycle up and down that hill unless I had to.
If there was a QTN running the length of Symonds Street to Britomart then I imagine that the two easiest ways to get to the uni would be to get off at Newton or Britomart and transfer to the QTN. A bit lazy in my mind, but could be useful if you are too hungover or it is too wet to walk up the hill from Parnell or Victoria St stations.
What do you mean ‘if’ James? The Central Connector QTN bus route does exactly what you have described right now!
The only thing missing is the integrated fares system to allow easy transfers without financial penalty.
I mean all the way up to Newton Station.
Well it does go all the way up to Grafton Station, which serves the same function (and has the benefit of existing right now).
There are enough buses on Symonds St to make that connection work once Newton Station was built, I don’t think you would need a QTN specifically for the task.
“Nick R – ok, I didn’t realize the cycleway would be along Wellesley Street…Although I guess it has to be unless they built a massive bridge spanning Grafton Gulley. That’s a shame. I wouldn’t cycle up and down that hill unless I had to.”
Depends where you are looking from, and where the cycleway will go. If you are coming from the east (lets say Parnell, via the proposed Baguely cycleway) then you would have to climb up the hill at some point anyway. Doing it via Wellesley Street, you’d probably have a gentler grade (even if slightly longer route of course) than trying to pedal up Alten Road, or push the bike up the walking path at Constitution Hill!
The intention is certainly to have the Parnell cycleway go to Wellesly Street east, to use the new clip-on or new walk/cyclebridge intended to go onto Wellesley Street East over Grafton Gully (part of the route improvements Wellesly Street / Grafton Street Council is intending). It will also be closer to (and possibly link with) whatever NZTA ends up building in terms of the Northwestern Cycleway through the CMJ – with this other new path also to access the uni.