It seems that the NZ Herald is determined to undermine support for the City Rail Link, although Auckland Transport also seem to be doing a good job of that too. How so? Well let’s explain.
Here’s the story on the front page of today’s Herald:
Their new dream home – right in the path of rail project
Excited homeowners moving into a new $10.5 million apartment block have been told it may be demolished for Auckland’s rail-loop project.
Residents are still moving into the Tawari Mews in Mt Eden. The property – where apartments sell for between $388,000-$480,000 – are still being marketed online as “a haven amid the hectic pace of the burgeoning metropolis”.
But the 24-apartment block is among 210 buildings in the way of the $2.8 billion project and the new residents are furious Auckland Council approved it, only for its transport arm to put their homes in the firing line of a scheme yet to win Government funding approval.
Oh please, oh please, oh please can we stop calling it a loop. It’s a fair enough story I suppose, but it would be nice to see some of these bad news stories about the CRL balanced by other ones. We submitted an op-ed last week explaining the project and its need, which still hasn’t been published, rather frustratingly given how topical the issue is at the moment and all the mud being slung at the project.
But Auckland Transport aren’t doing much better at the moment. In short, the whole hooplah around whether this new apartment building goes or stays is actually extremely unnecessary, as the details of the article explain:
The apartments are about 600 metres west of where trains will enter or emerge from tunnels starting 3.5km away at Britomart, but more surface tracks are needed for splitting rail movements at a new interchange station behind New North Rd.
Mr Foster said Auckland Council should have warned property developer Hughes Construction in time, leaving the site vacant and avoiding hefty extra financial cost and disruption to people’s lives.
An earlier post I put together on the CRL route announcement outlined the one real piece of new information – that an “Inner West Interchange Station” was being considered in the location shown in the picture below: 
That post also outlined, informed by some Twitter conversation with Auckland Transport, that this station is only really necessary if the Eastern Link (the direct rail connection between Newton Station and Grafton Station) is not constructed. The Tawari Mews complex is just to the west of the station, perhaps slightly off-screen in the above image, showing that it’s really only affected by broader trackworks necessary for the station rather than anything to do with the tracks needed to get trains into the CRL tunnel. Here’s its location:
A lot of questioning in the article surrounds why the Council let the complex be constructed when it should have known it would end up needing to be demolished. The thing is that nobody expected land use impacts this far away from the tunnel portal until Auckland Transport came up with this daft idea of dropping the Eastern link. Auckland Transport can easily make this problem go away. Just go with the Eastern Link option (assuming that it’s feasible to build from an engineering point of view), then the Inner West Interchange becomes unnecessary, the building is saved and everyone’s happy again – plus we get a far better and more connected rail network.
There will be many more battles to get the CRL built which have to occur. This is one battle that’s really quite unnecessary.
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what’s the cost of the eastern link cf. this interchange?
One paragraph its a link, then it’s a loop again….
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10820290
So the Herald wants to kill the CRL. Sigh.
The Herald knows that it’s a controversial topic, so they love to stir a bit. Sure, one can dream about them being positive (I wish…), but in fact, even in that case we’d occasionally get articles like this.
and again, by the same journalist Anne Gibson…… http://www.nzherald.co.nz/property/news/article.cfm?c_id=8&objectid=10820244
someone needs to tell this woman its not a loop
It’s part of a loop though.
No, trains will not be going round and round it.
While AT seems intent on proving that it has the ability to pretty much ‘miscommunicate’ everything from its new ‘old’ logo to the CRL designation process, it’s increasingly evident that the New Zealand Herald is keen to toe the Steven Joyce line by ensuring that the CRL project gets the worst press ever. I’ve not noticed this Anne Gibson before but she does appear to be an adherent of the Fox News school of reporting where you fit the facts to suit the agenda. She’s got another article on the Yates building in Albert Street, which is described in the headline as a ‘graffiti magnet’ rather than the heritage building that it is.
Anne Gibson, who apparently is the Herald’s property editor, courteously informs me that she’ll call it a link in the future but suggests for some reason that the headline writers might do the same. I’ve absolutely no doubt that in a future article she’ll be writing about how property values in station precincts will grow exponentially following completion of the CRL.
I think she’s probably received quite a few of these emails. Her reply to me was polite but very short.
For what it’s worth, the breakroom chat about this article was “bowl it” – people didn’t exactly think the building was worth saving…
Interestingly enough a poll on the nz herald website shows most people don’t mind bulldozing it.
I emailed Anne Gibson this morning pointing out that the project is called the City Rail Link, and it’s not correct to call it a rail loop (cf London’s Circle Line pre-2009). To her credit she replied quite quickly and said she’ll call it a link in future (and pointed her to the excellent summary page on this blog). A small victory I guess!
Good, there also needs to be qualification of some of those stories given that in some cases demolition is not necessary if eastern link is built as pointed out by Peter…that’s a bit much to be asking of the Herald, but if there’s a silver lining in this it’s that it strengthens the case for the eastern link which should in all honesty be a no brainer…
It isn’t too much to expect it to be made clear that there is an alternative. Part of a news journalist’s responsibility is to report fairly. Of course AT’s opaque comms don’t help much…
Anyhow this doesn’t read like an overly negative story though, and this post is equally sensationalist with intro line “It seems that the NZ Herald is determined to undermine support for the City Rail Link”!
Let’s all hope AT just get on and build that eastern link, not another station to slow journey’s.
(Excuse greengrocer’s apostrophe above.)
I see another Brewer comment targeted at the ignorant…sorry that’s giving him too much credibility, it’s just an ignorant comment.
I know this is a little off topic and may have been covered in earlier blogs but a couple of nights ago I spent the evening looking at London’s Crossrail website and the intriguing construction videos including the cutaway explanations of their tunnel boring machine. I was blown away by the whole engineering requirements. It has given me great confidence with our project here in Auckland as by comparison our city link should be a breeze.
Peter, you’re right – this is a battle that we don’t need to have. Not because AT have blundered in their planning but because, if we had infrastructure development organisations that actually treated the people directly affected with a modicum of human decency and some more than fair compensation options, then a lot of these battles would go away. Instead of which what we now have are a group of people who have been told that their building (regardless of its architectural merits) which represents home to them, is in the way of some project or other and must be bulldozed. These poor individuals are probably wondering right now what they have done to deserve being pitched into a nightmare of other people’s creation – especially when they see poll results in a national newspaper indicating that the greater population is quite happy to demand that their homes (the residents) must be destroyed to make way for something that they (the public who are usually NOT directly affected) want. How would you feel in that situation? We have no right to expect these people to just roll over and resign themselves to starting all over again in finding a home – and possibly losing a great deal of money in the process just because they happen to be in the way. If you want this project to go smoothly then start agitating for these people to be given a more than fair go!
The lawyers are starting to circle – they will make money out of this situation and it is the public who will be paying their fees. This is all so stressful for the people involved and so unnecessary but unfortunately all too prevalent. The problem is not unfixable but it demands a certain amount of courage to overturn years of ingrained thinking (usually within councils and government agencies) that they are not in the business of property management and that property owners represent an annoying hurdle that need to be overcome at the lowest possible cost to the project. It also demands that the Public Works Act, a draconian and over-complex piece of legislation, receives its much long overdue re-write so that innocent citizen’s rights are better protected.
And Ann, if you are so keen to support the rights of these people and not just looking at this particular problem as a hook to bitch about the rail link, then start looking at what is happening to the individuals affected by Puhoi to Warkworth and any of the other RoNS.
I just want to throw some sanity on this. I live just up from Tawari Mews. I received a letter from AT explaining that my property MAY be affected. It in no way suggests demolition. I am sure this is the same letter that the residents of Tawari Mews received. Evidently someone has interpreted this to bmean definite demolition.
Hi James. The Tawari Mews letter clearly stated, as also communicated by Auckland transport, that the land is definitely required according to the current design.
Someone needs to highlight the number of homes lost when the CMJ was built as a comparsion for major transport infrastructure.
In addition, does anyone know how many properties/buildings would be affected by the amount of new roads etc we would have to build if we don’t get the CRL? Now I imagine that is a lot more than those affected by the current CRL project.
AT need to get agressive and press the point that while some people will be affected by the project it is a lot less than other options available and nothing like what happened in the past.
Just regarding why this building was allowed to be started (never mind completed), the article quotes AT as saying that without a corridor designation they have no power to stop these things.
Also, given how long this stuff takes, the project was likely designed and consented long before there was anything approaching a public consensus on the route of the CRL. Remember, the CRL only really came to light during the 2010 mayoral campaign even though the concept had been around for decades and ARTA had done some planning work. By the time we knew we had Len not John, this project would’ve been very far advanced. If people were moving in three months ago (and I note that the article doesn’t say how long the apartments have been available for habitation) construction started at least the middle of last year and planning at least six months before that.
There’s no fault to be placed with AT. Without knowing where the CRL was going to run, they couldn’t exactly start guessing at paths and try to politely discourage (probably with zero success) construction that might conflict with the CRL, potentially finding themselves on the wrong end of lawsuits for costs incurred should it turn out that construction could’ve progressed.
Auckland Council and Auckland Transport wouldn’t have even existed when that building was ‘signed off’, that would have been a good three or four years ago.
Bit more of a balanced write-up from Gibson today, manages to include a couple of lines about CRL benefits in the middle – and not a “loop” in sight…perhaps we got through?
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/property/news/article.cfm?c_id=8&objectid=10820770
Yeah amusing how keen the TV3 staff are to relocate. Rumour is that there were cheers around the TV3 building when they found out it’s in the way of the rail tunnel. That should mean they’re now all big supporters!