At times I do wonder why it’s so damn difficult to get public transport projects in Auckland right. After the numerous stuff-ups that surrounded the opening of the Newmarket station, we’ve had a reasonably good run in recent times (although the huge celebration to open the partially finished extension to the previously upgraded Kingsland station was a bit strange). Grafton station, Avondale station and New Lynn station openings have all progressed significantly or been completed without many problems. In fact, after a lot of work and not much to show for it throughout 2009, so far this year we have seen great progress on Auckland’s rail system.
Unfortunately, it appears as though the good old “whatever can be stuffed up will be stuffed up” adage has returned to the Onehunga Line. After it being so damn difficult to get any progress on the construction of the Onehunga railway station, it now appears as though the platforms are being constructed too short to take the standard configuration of the electric trains that are due to arrive here from 2013 onwards. Here’s parts of the article from the NZ Herald today on the issue:
Auckland rail officials have been accused of “incompetence on a grand scale” for building a railway platform too short for the trains it will serve.
Auckland Regional Council chairman Mike Lee is furious with the Auckland Regional Transport Authority (Arta), after discovering a 55-metre platform being built for the long-awaited Onehunga station will be at least 15m too short for three-car electric units due in service from mid-2013.
“They’ve gone ahead and built this without future-proofing for electrification. The people of Onehunga have been short-changed.
“They haven’t even present-proofed it – it’s just sheer incompetence.
“Why should Onehunga of all the stations of Auckland be made into a Lilliput station?”
Arta – an ARC subsidiary – has confirmed Onehunga’s platform will fall short of the 70 metres required to load three-car electric trains, and says special arrangements may have to be made for trains running between Onehunga and Britomart to be shorter than for the rest of the Auckland network.
Authority communications manager Sharon Hunter said last night that an alternative after electrification could be to run standard-length trains into Onehunga, but to load only two of the three cars.
Patronage modelling indicated that two-car diesel trains would be enough to launch an Onehunga passenger service in September, but an extension of the platform would be considered if future demand called for it, she said.
Although the regional council spent about $8 million buying an 0.8 hectare site off the southern end of Onehunga Mall for the station, and associated “transit-oriented development” projects, Ms Hunter said Auckland City consent conditions and other constraints meant a 55m platform was the longest structure able to be built there “in the timeframe”.
The conditions required new railway lines to be at least 14m away from apartment blocks off Princes St, to meet noise and vibration limits.
Allowances also had to be made for a potential rail extension for freight trains to Onehunga’s port, and to maintain vehicle access to a large electricity pylon.
Now I must admit that when I was originally told that the platform would only be long enough to take two-car trains I didn’t immediately go “but the electric trains will be at least three cars long”. After a bit more thought on the issue, and some discussion with friends, the sillyness of creating a platform so short that it can’t handle the trains you’re going to be getting within the next three years seemed to come clear.
The particularly strange thing is that there appears to be plenty of room on the site to extend the platform in the opposite direction to the apartment building (credit for photo here):
It seems like there’d be heaps of room to extend the platform further to the left of the photo. Remember we’re only talking about 15 metres here.
ARTA’s justification for the really short platform seems to be largely based on what seems to be incredibly pessimistic patronage forecasts (they never seem to have thought the line will be a success, which is odd as I think it will be a surprising success). Here’s a part of ARTA’s response:
Ms Hunter said patronage studies suggested there would be about 160 passengers using the station between 7am and 9am, for which two cars would be enough.
The Onehunga line, which has not been used by passenger trains for decades, will open on September 19. The line goes from Onehunga to Britomart, joining the existing southern line at Penrose.
Surely it wouldn’t have been difficult or expensive to make the platform a mere 15 metres longer? Well I guess the good news is that we have three years to sort this out before the electric trains arrive.
Please let this be the last stuff-up for the Onehunga Line.
Processing...
Surely it is cheaper now to build the platform to take 3 – carriages than to bring all the equipment back at a later date. Also not to mention, inflation.
It’ll be easy to extend the platform in the future, look how quickly the job has been down at Mt Eden, Mt Albert etc etc, a matter of a few weeks.
Hmm, this seems to be something of a storm in a teacup. The Herald has confirmed the platform can be extended easily in the future, albeit with a second consent process first.
The real tragedy here was that ARTA was brow beaten by the ARC to put a station on an unsuitable site that the ARC council went ahead and bought against advice from council officers. Mike Lee is making a song and dance about something that is of his own making.
Why is this site unsuitable? If anything it’s ideal….It faces directly onto Onehunga Mall. Be glad ARC even bought the site, with the cost cutting that has gone on within ARTA after the govt. PT cuts we’d probably have ended up with a few bits of wood propped up next to the tracks further down the line .
The excuses ARTA have given are just pathetic. It would be so much cheaper just to do it now than have to do works again in 3 -5 years. Perhaps ARTA/AT should give themselves the goal of building patronage faster than planned to fill the trains. At the end of the day it is just pure short sightedness and incompetence by the people involved.
Extend it when needed, (I think pretty much straight away). This station will be changed pretty quick when the airport line goes in anyway.
While I’m sure it’ll be easy enough to extend the platform when needed, and probably not that expensive either – by then we will be dealing with a live railway track and upgrades might disrupt services etc. etc. I just don’t understand why it wasn’t done properly the first time.
Furthermore, restricting the Onehunga line to absolutely 2 car ADLs only seems quite silly in my opinion. What if there’s an event on at Onehunga where you might want longer trains? What if an ADL breaks down and you need to replace it with an ADK or an SA train? And so on, and so forth.
Slightly silly situation but easily recovered.
There’s still a couple of months until the station is supposed to open. I wonder if the 15 metres could be added to the platform between now and then?
Theoretically we have until 2013 to really worry about it, let’s hope passenger loadings far exceed expectations making their ‘future-proofing’ look as ridiculous as it is non-existent.
But perhaps with a bit more pressure they could whack the bits on, or at least put in the consent application to allow them to do it later this year…
Yes, ARTA could add the 15m to the south-west end of the platform (away from the apartments) before the line opens – it is a cheap (under $100,000) extension, with nothing needed other than an extra lightpole.
But why MUST the platform be adjacent to Onehunga Mall? This is part of the ‘dot-on-map’ myth of planners. They put little dots on the map to indicate a station, and think that solves all issues. They foget platforms extends dozens or even hundreds of metres, so are strips, not dots.
What I mean is – why couldn’t the platform have been built along Princes St, east from Galway St? (as I have suggested before). That would have been 14m from thew apartments, just 50m walk from Onehunga Mall, closer to DressSmart Mall, and extendable! Oh, and the cash saved from not buying the ITM/apartment site could have paid for extending the line to Onehunga wharf.
Speaking of which, they haven’t laid track to the wharf yet, though it was supposed to open first, and bed the tracks and signals in before we repeat the Newmarket blunder on Onehunga passengers services. So, they did put a set of points in NOW on this final Onehunga station track so it can be extended later to the wharf without impeding passenger ops, right? right? Can’t see it in the photo…
@bob – the money used to buy this land is not the same money being used to build it. If ARC hadn’t bought this land, it would not have meant the money would be spent on the station, instead it would have been used elsewhere.
Furthermore, looking at google earth you can see that the rail designation closeet to the port has already been built over which isn’t a great outcome, but I wasn’t aware connecting the port back onto the network was actually funded. From memory Kiwirail said the port would have to pay for the extension and they said no – why would they? They’re getting the road right to their door for free, why should rail be different?….
On the matter of the port, what do they actually do there anymore? Is it an active profitable port still?
Galway street was the original station location proposed by ARTA and KiwiRail and in my opinion is where the station should have been built. It is as close to the main retail part of Onehunga Mall and would have avoided the nonsense that is going on now.
I actually think this is the better location. Galway Street would have been a very very tight station whereas this one you have to space to create a great transit-oriented development at some point in the future, and in the meanwhile you can create a nice public space around the station.
Didn’t someone comment on here a while back that ARTA basically copied the blueprints for the Melbourne (or Sydney) rail platforms.
This may be the outcome of that. But who really knows….
Silly Aucklanders. 😉
this has to be seen as a temporary measure. long term, we are expecting (or hoping) for not only rail to the airport, but also a rail link to Avondale, using the existing designation. trying to resolve a station location and configuration for these 3 possible lines is incredibly complex (as we know from Newmarket), and so some serious thinking and planning will have to be done for that, which almost certainly will result in a station location different from this one.
the other advantage in this site is that with ARC holding the land, they can encourage a transit friendly and intensive use on the land
The outcry over this is even more ridiculous than the outcry over the sheds tussle. So it is too short, but can be extended easily (after all, you can mostly work behind the protection of the buffer stop, and putting a single guard down the line to warn of coming trains surely isn’t going to break the bank).
I don’t think this is a big issue at all.
I do agree Max, but there is a lot of sensitivity about Onehunga station considering that it appears as though ARTA and KiwiRail have done their best to delay delay delay it. It also seems incredibly silly to limit the station to two-car trains even at the moment – as I noted above it doesn’t give you any operational flexibility. Furthermore, as the Onehunga Line can never take frequencies better than one train every 30 minutes (because of Britomart capacity issues and also because of the single-tracking), if the line is popular four-carriage trains might be really necessary.
It’s not quite true that Onehunga could never have better than 30 minute frequencies, it could be improved at the expense of not improving the frequency on the other lines. This might prove useful for scheduling, considering that the southern line overlaps with the Onehunga and then the Eastern for much perhaps of its length then there might not be need to run it every ten minutes.
Yeah good point Nick, why not make the Southern Line for Pukekohe trains only and send all Papakura and Otahuhu trains via Glen Innes?
What idiots Aucklanders are.
All eastern line trains will terminate at Manukau City from the middle of next year.
Is there a passing loop somewhere on the branch line? I thought that was the other constraining factor of frequencies on the line?
There is a loop near Te Papapa I believe, think its between Mays and Maurice Road. Not sure whether its big enough for four cars though.
@Nathan – the rail platforms were not copied from Melbourne and were designed by local architects.