Baldwin Avenue station on the Western Line has been closed for the last six weeks or so while the station has been completely rebuilt. I took some photos of the “work in progress” back during the holidays. The official station opening is on Tuesday, so I went out there today to see how things look:
There’s nothing particularly special about the design of the station – it’s pretty stock standard. However, it’s good to see another of Auckland’s train stations being brought up to scratch. Mt Albert station is pretty much the only one on the Western Line that remains in exceedingly poor condition.
The signage is pretty clear about where the different platforms are. I hope that there’s room to put in real-time arrival time clocks in the relatively near future.
Baldwin Ave used to be a really weird station, with the platforms quite “off-set” from each other. I think it’s actually potentially quite an important station, because it sits in the middle of a residential area that’s actually extremely difficult to serve with buses – because there is just a maze of little streets and no arterials aside from New North Road and Carrington Road at the edge of the area. It also has good access to Mt Albert Grammar School – and certainly it seems a lot of school kids use the station.
Update: there’s some discussion in the comments about pedestrian access to the station so I’ve added a couple more photos to show the situation a bit more clearly:
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The suburb that Baldwin Station serves, all bungalows, is basically a rail serviced TOD, from the period when the government believed in such things. Of course most of Wellington’s development form this period were rail TODs…. funny how we have to learn things over and over again….. Pretty lovely calm and leafy streets… with a completely different- and far superior- character to say Flat Bush, and all those other more recent auto dependent ones.
Are there bus interchanges and bus bays? Perth gets something like 50% of their passengers from buses that connect to the station, without these, a substantial amount of patronage on rail would be forgone.
Not really it mainly serves a walk-up catchment which is fine for this station. It would be pointless to direct many bus routes through here – they can connect at Mt Albert Station.
Here’s a map: http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Auckland,+New+Zealand&ll=-36.878127,174.72019&spn=0.008205,0.021136&z=16
There is something unique about this station, they have built the electrification masts into the platform rather than put them down the middle like at other stations with side platforms, it is the one on the left hand side of that first picture. It wasn’t well designed and as you can see in the photo they have now put up a fibreboard (or something similar) sheet to stop people from climbing it (it does help that it is now the same colour though).
They do really need to do something about the two level crossings right next to the station and hopefully all the crossings are something that AT will start to have a look at as it is spending that benefits both the road and rail networks.
We bought our first house in December, only a few minutes walk to Baldwin Ave Station. The existence of the station was a very good selling point to us, notwithstanding the mature fabric of bungalows and (ex)state houses pepper-potted about. The area is a bit of a hidden gem really.
I catch the 8:07 into Britomart, and the station is pretty busy, probably the majority are schoolkids. The 8:07 is only a four car train, so it standing room only until Grafton, when the St Peter’s boys get off. I don’t know why they don’t put extra carriages on.
The station location (surrounded by houses) does remind me of some stations on the Hutt Valley line – I used to catch the train from Silverstream into Wellington when going to university. The refurbishment is reassuring to me that the station is seen as a long-term asset, too! #selfish
some more 6 car sets will be appearing soon. I think the govt managed to delay that as well. May also be waiting on Kiwirail to release a few more DFT’s (more powerful locos), and the late arrival of the chinese freight locos would have pushed this back as well.
Good to hear a service that arrives Britomart at 8.30am is full as well, does it get a lot of patronage for Newmarket workers?
Regarding your opening sentence – Baldwin Ave has been open for two weeks now.
@Matt, level crossings are the best option for places like this. Nobody wants big overbridges blotting the suburban landscape, and nobody wants access to their homes reduced either. Level crossings are not a problem for trains, so their closure doesn’t bring any benefits to rail other than reduced long term maintenance.
It doesn’t have to be an overbridge, especially as there shouldn’t be any huge truck trapsing through the area. Also there are benefits to rail from having simpler signalling. As an example when I spoke to Murray Hood who is the electrification project manager, he said they were considering grade separating Sarawia St simply because it would make the signalling that much easier. It is also one less thing to go wrong.
I presume you’re talking about vehicle crossings nearby, but I was wondering about passenger access between platforms. Unless Admin has skillfully managed to avoid including a raised or subway crossing in his photos then this will be at grade. At grade rail crossings in stations certainly wouldn’t happen in London, and I don’t think it happens in Sydney. I regularly visit friends who live closer to Wollongong that Central and their station has an overbridge with a lift even though they only get three trains an hour in each direction. At what stage do we have to retrofit raised crossings in Auckland stations?
There certainly are no pedestrian over or under-passes from what I saw. There’s always going to be a balance between the safety improvements of such under/over passes with the inconvenience, safety risk and potential urban blight that they bring (for example the Glen Eden one is being pulled down only a few years after it was built because it was so horribly ugly).
Crossing tracks as a pedestrian doesn’t seem that dangerous to me… so why do other places go to so much trouble to avoid it?
Talking of urban blight, I caught this review of Wellington’s Naenae station a couple of weeks ago:
http://wellington.scoop.co.nz/?p=31183
Ultimately, the problem might be Naenae itself. I’ve never been there but I believe it is an ugly area with little to recommend it. However it sounds like the subway is part of the problem and similar subways should be avoided. The Baldwin Ave photos show that there is vegetation blocking most views from adjacent properties. I wonder if encouraging the development of apartments and multi-story houses next to stations with decent sight-lines on to the stations might improve perceptions of safety and reduce vandalism? Streets usually feel safer and attract less tagging than alleyways.
Obi I think in many cities they have third-rail electrification which means that you really have to keep people off the tracks so they don’t accidentally fry themselves.
In other cities, your trains are coming every 2-3 minutes so having pedestrian interaction with the tracks is just a pretty bad idea. For Auckland’s current situation I don’t have a problem with station access points like Baldwin Ave, and in fact I think they’re a lot better than things like the Mt Albert station and Morningside Station tunnels – which feel like death traps.
Obi – its interesting to compare the Auckland stations with their counterparts in Wellington (although I have only seen pictures so it might not be a 100% fair comparison). The upgraded stations in Auckland seem well designed with good lighting, cameras and clear sight lines and the shelters have been designed so that people can’t hide in them to surprise an unsuspecting person. By comparision in Wellington there seem to be a lot of pedestrian subways and block shelters in and around stations, even the newly upgraded stations down there don’t seem as nice or safe as Aucklands stations.
“many cities they have third-rail electrification which means that you really have to keep people off the tracks so they don’t accidentally fry themselves”
I’d forgotten that the UK use the third rail system. Duh! I do recall that you can often cross the tracks in rural locations. If I recall correctly, the electrified rail had a missing section in the vicinity of the crossing so that ramblers wouldn’t electrocute themselves.
“in Wellington there seem to be a lot of pedestrian subways and block shelters in and around stations”
Many of the Hutt Valley stations had (maybe still have?) wooden buildings on them from ancient times when the stations were staffed. What did the staff do? No idea… the buildings always seemed to be much bigger than would be required to sell a few tickets. They generally looked derelict… which is not a good way of promoting a clean and modern service.
Yes, there are controlled motorised gates at the at-grade crossing at Baldwin Ave. It seems pretty safe. I have learnt to get on a middle carriage so that by the time I walk to the gate after getting off, the gate as opened as the train has passed.
There is pretty limited space around the platform edges, they butt right up against rear fences of the neighbouring properties, so I don’t imagine either an underpass or overbridge being a likely prospect.
As to the Wellington stations, yes they are in serious need of investment, most are old and tired, and the underpasses are unsafe. Perceptions matter in these instances.
“At what stage do we have to retrofit raised crossings in Auckland stations?”
I guess the answer to your question is that we’ll do it when we have the money to do it. An overbridge at Avondale was canned due to budget cuts and I think most people would be happy for a station upgrade followed by overpasses/underpasses as money comes back on stream. We’re currently being held at ransom by a government who has shifted large amounts of money from PT into highway building, and a lot of projects have as a result been scaled back or delayed. At present a basic upgrade is all that’s been budgeted I’m guessing. As train frequences increase, and with a more even handed transport minister I’m sure they’ll be going back and improving the stations.
Melbourne is covered in at-grade pedestrian crossings, almost all of them have automatic gates that close like a level crossing.
The can be frustrating at stations that don’t also have overbridges or subways, in some circumstances they effectively close access to the platform just as the train you are trying to catch arrives.
In other areas they are handy, I had one near my old place that allowed me to take a short cut to the shops. You couldn’t justify building a footbridge in that location as it would only be used by the residents of about a dozen homes, but the crossing saved an 800m detour via the next main road along.
For the record, Baldwin re-opened on Feb 1. http://www.aucklandtrains.co.nz/2011/02/01/baldwin-ave-re-opens-photos/
It’s just a belated officials cup of tea and pat on the back on Tuesday to celebrate.
Wellington has done so much in the way of track, overhead and train upgrades, but has never formulated any kind of uniform station upgrade project like Auckland has. They have had a number of platform upgrades like Auckland, but they lack new station structures and extensive lighting/CCTV cameras.
It seems Auckland has done better in that regard, while Wellington has done better in regard to things like timetabling. Each has their strengths and weaknesses.
Regarding Baldwin Ave – will the minister be there as usual? They should probably start using a cardboard cutout of him and play a pre-recorded speech, as each opening is always the same as all the rest.