This is a Guest Post by “Mr Anderson” who will be keeping us up to date with transport news stories while Matt L and Peter M are away on holiday.
Auckland Transport have released some plans for the significant rebuild of the Mt Albert train station. This is good news as Mt Albert is one of the worst and most neglected stations on the network:
Auckland Transport is about to undertake major works at Mount Albert Train Station to improve passenger experience.
This project recognises that well-designed facilities are a key element in attracting people to public transport. The upgrade will also improve access to the station, develop Mount Albert into a significant transport hub where passengers can easily transfer between trains and buses and link the rail station with the proposed town centre upgrade.
More than 2100 people a day use the station, serving schools, Unitec and residents and has been marked for improvement.
Benefits
• Better comfort and weather protection for waiting passengers, improved security and lighting and electronic train timetable information.
• Improved access to the station platform from Wilcott Street and New North Road
• Better access for people with limited mobility, pedestrians and cyclists
• A safer, more attractive station
• Replacing the underpass with ramp access to the platform
Features
• New shelters, rubbish bins, CCTV, PA system, HOP ticketing machine, lighting and passenger information displays
• New lift to give people with limited mobility access to platform from Carrington Road
• A future passenger lift to the platform from Wilcott Street
• Pedestrian access between New North Road and Wilcott Street is maintained
While it is good Mt Albert station is getting upgraded, these plans represent a relatively minor upgrade to a station that quite possibly deserves something a bit more significant. But what’s really needed is better integration with the surrounding town centre and that’s not really just Auckland Transport’s responsibility.
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It looks like the design allows for a future (I hope) connection from the eastern concourse to the little carpark at the northern end of the block of shops on New North Rd. The carpark could be removed and a proper concourse could span directly from the street and across the tracks to the elevator and stairs. Access from NNR has always been terrible, and giving the station a ‘street frontage’ as it were would be great for access and visibility.
Word is that this plan is designed to integrate with any future development. But something does need to be done pre electrification and, frankly, for current users as it is a terrible station right now.
Mr A. I am often complaining that NZTA take too little care with place and I also wish that AT would coordinate much much more with AC, especially with its property arm to improve places like these. This site is just screaming out for a whole block sized TOD.
Of course it would also face opposition from locals who will no doubt Milford-like work themselves into a tizzy at any sign of change or any decent building height. As well as the neo-liberal miserablists who never want any public body to invest in anything. So it goes.
Are you suggesting the council be allowed to use eminent domain to forcibly acquire land for residential development? That might be ok for totalitarian romantics, but not the rest of us.
No I’m just suggesting some smart development investments at transport hubs. With private sector would be best, like the Victorian Housing Commission does. I’m sure that owners of those hardly thriving shops could be offered a deal that would be attractive yet the city would gain hugely from agglomeration and quality of public, commercial, and residential amenity. Medium to long term view on cost/benefit.
Fair enough. Why dont they just upzone? The shop owners wouldn’t even need to be told what to do.
Why not? We do it for all sorts of roads, rail, sewers, power lines, we do it for parks and stadia, just about anything that shapes our cities. Why not for residential?
D’oh. Shoulda read properly first.
Well why should the council be allowed to do something that the existing land owners aren’t? Why not just stop banning them from developing their own land, and see what happens.
Well naturally liberalising planning constraints and height controls would be the first step. But that would only go so far in the likes of Mt Albert, because developers without eminent domain powers could face an almost insurmountable task trying to assemble land parcels into a suitable sites for development. Sure there would be many places where a market response would be fine, like in Morningside where you have large format warehousing up against the stations.
But in Mt Albert it would be much more difficult. Say someone wanted to redevelop the Video Ezy and shops next to it, the ones right alongside the station. Maybe change them from single level shops to a three or four story row with shops at ground level and offices and apartments above. Well those fourteen shops are on fourteen separate titles. What developer is going to be able to buy up fourteen parcels in a timely fashion? Some might not want to sell, some might try to extort the developer, some might be caught up in all sorts of legal hurdles. It would take years, decades even to assemble the parcel at huge financial risk. The developer will just go buy a piece of greenfields farmland instead.
With a partnership between council, a developer and perhaps some of the existing landowners, eminent domain can be used to overcome those problems. It’s how Britomart got built, why not at a smaller scale in Mt Albert?
Sydney and Melbourne show us the two alternatives quite well. In Sydney the state government has no qualms about using eminent domain to assemble development sites around transit stations and they’ve had quite good outcomes with regional centres, for example Chattswood, Bondi Junction and Paramatta. In Melbourne however the state has always been hands off, leaving it to the private sector to develop regional centres. The outcome there is no new regional centres have been developed. Instead developers have been forced to locate anywhere they can get the land, not where a centre should be located. Take Chadstone for example, it was built on the site of an old convent farm that had become surrounded by suburbia. It’s a pretty bad locale for a huge mall and office development, but that was the only place a suitable landholding existed in one parcel.
Thats interesting, I didnt realise Chatswood had come about that way – it is an impressive development.
I know it would be easier to use eminent domain, but is it necessary? If the council upzoned those shops to 7 storeys, what would happen? Are there examples of town centres in Melbourne that are significantly under developed relative to their height limit purely because of small land holdings?
At the moment no developer is going to try to pick up those properties when there is no certainty of being able to develop at the end of the process. And you are hardly going to apply for a plan change for land you don’t own.
I guess if you upzoned them to seven stories you’d get a couple demolished and rebuilt, maybe a few extended, and many untouched. A bit hodge podge So it would be better than now, but far below the potential. You certainly wouldn’t see a good integrated solution for the whole centre, just iterative improvements.
In Melbourne it is tricky because they do have much the same “keep it low height and low density unless specifically noted otherwise” broad planning regulations. But the old “Melbourne 2030” plan (in force until very recently) had a good seven regional centres identified (without restrictive height limits) at key public transport nodes. There was very little change in those centres as a result of that, despite Melbourne going through a gangbusters phase of population growth and development. Personally I attribute the failure of the centres policy to the fact they left it entirely to the private sector to do unaided, especially the constraint of parcel packaging.
No, I doubt any developer is going to pick up properties on the whim that they might be able to put a good parcel together and then might be able to get a plan change to do a development. That’s why I think more council involvement in development is key. If a developer could partner with the council and have confidence they could get the land and get a plan deviation from the start, then we might see a lot more quality intensification co-ordinated with the likes of rail station upgrades, streetscapes enhancements and other public works.
Why not? They forcibly acquire land for road widening…
I doubt that would be necessary swan. Interesting to note that most of Paris’s new orbital metro line is being funded through redevelopment of areas around the stations – including the liberal use of eminent domain.
Hi Mr Anderson
I am one of the Albert Eden Local Board spokespeople for the Mt Albert Train Station redevelopment and the also the spokesperson for the town centre redevelopment. Over the past week we had an one evening and a Saturday of Public consultation regarding the proposed plans for the train station. We over 80 participants on the Saturday and approximately 40 people at the evening event. We received fantastic feedback and suggestions many of which are very carefully being considered and introduced into the design where possible. There is possibly one quite significant design change that may still occur which will satisfy a lot of the issues raised by many of the Mt Albert Public. This station has been designed to allow for the future plans to literally drop in where required, the board has made sure of that. Unfortunately electrification waits for no one.
Also a lot of the ideas and concerns raised e.g linking with the inner and outer link buses, The width of the existing ramp, access to New North Road and adding that Mt Albert touch/personalty are all very much in the mix and a lot forms part of the town centre redevelopment. The Albert Eden Local Board as part of it’s “Local Board Plan” identifies the Mt Albert Town centre redevelopment as one of its key project and was unanimously supported by the governing body when asked for additional funding to move this project forward and make a real difference to this town centre that has been neglected for well over 20 years. This is very much a work in progress and the board is nipping at the heels of those we need to bring this project along. But as we all know the really good things take time to bring off.
Also the idea of providing a full concourse over the train station and the eyesore that is Ballast lane is already mooted as a long term goal for Mt Albert which would provide a boulevard facing North west and potential for apartment style housing above. All this of course would be great for Mt Albert and subject to developer getting on board with or without a council partnership. I personally would like the council to see the opportunities in creating a fabulous revitalised town centre by working with developers to create an exemplar of future town centres in Auckland recognising thier importance in this new city structure and desire to be the worlds most liveable city!
Now that I am aware of your site I will try and provide news and updates when I can.
Thanks Pauline, good work and we look forward to all updates.
Anything they build here will be ‘designed to integrate with any future development’. Just sounds like some words thrown in to sell the idea.
Effectively once they decide to develop the area, to truly integrate that design would still take a huge amount of work, and if you are going to redevelop the Station we should be looking to do it right the first time. Otherwise this being Auckland and all…it will never happen.
where is the guest post?
this is just a rip-off from the AT website!!!
That’s the idea though Lisa, quite a few of my posts will be just to keep people up with transport news. Might also get the opportunity to do a few more ‘opinion’ like posts too.
it always surprises me how poorly rail passengers are treated at stations compared with the Northern busway passengers!
I guess the northern busway had the benefit of a clean slate, no live transit operations and no existing urban fabric to work around. They did also spend $100 million across five stations, so quite a bit more investment per station too.
I doubt walls on the shleters like a bigger bus shelter would have been difficult or over-expensive
The shelters have dividers running at ninety-degree angles to block the wind. You don’t want large-capacity shelters to blog access between the shelter and the rail line, I don’t think I have seen that anywhere. Also, the station is almost in a trench (of buildings), so wind isn’t so much an issue cross-wise, just length-wise, so those partitions should work just fine to protect users.
The current ramp down from Carrington Rd Bridge is not wide enough, I missed a train just yesterday trying to run down it as it was blocked by people exiting the station. The footpath on the bridge is not wide enough either, I really hope a concourse to the Video Ezy carpark gets built to solve this issue.
This problem would be solved if people learnt to walk on the left and not hog the whole path.
Have fun trying to tell that to a mother with a pram. She’ll have to throw the pram over the rail bridge to make that work.
Also it is ridiculous to tell people (including crowds of school kids – they’re not little soldiers!) to do single file on a narrow bridge when cars get four lanes.
It is called self-discipline! You use the full path when no-one is approaching and move to the left when necessary.
The changes are great and fix a number of issues but the designs don’t really stamp much personality on the area. They are just the standard station design. Would be great if every station in the network had its own personality. Each station a destination in itself.
I think concerns have already been raised about the Carrington Rd footpath. It is ridiculously narrow and has a big kerb drop. This issue hasn’t been addressed yet.
There are plans to extend out a plaza from the carpark to bring the station in to the town centre but I guess this involves buying airspace and the carpark.
Like Patrick I would love if the whole area got an overhaul. Alot of potential there if one of the better developers in Auckland got hold of it. One idea I heard was to try make better use of the lane behind the shops. This area brings down the experience of the station and helps make the station seem so detached. An option was to open up the back of the stores to the station with bars and cafes as it is north west facing. This proposal I think would need to bring more apartments though. Heights in the area are limited by Mt Albert.
I would be a little more ambitious… demolish all those crappy shops, cap the station to make a plaza and build new mixed use retail/residential building up to the height limit on Gt North Rd.
There were some pretty interesting schemes put together by students somewhere recently i think….?
I think those ideas have inspired the town centre redesign, which will hopefully work with this, but hasn’t been finalised yet.
Indeed, build up here. But also this is one of those places that needs a gold plated catchment area. Accommodate pedestrians at every intersection, add long term bike parking, and what about a simple bike share station to propel students to Unitec.
Yes demolishing those shops and capping the station is a good option. Some people may not think so but the Old post office is a bit iconic to tear down.
I remember seeing those schemes from the Unitec students. From memory the winning one had a 10+ apartment which I think isnt needed with the view shaft from Mt Albert and for human scale. Another idea in the schemes was to get the library from St Luke’s to the Mt Albert town centre. Westfield wouldn’t like that. Great for a walkable town centre.
I don’t share your nostalgia about the 70s post office building but it would depend on the scheme, feels like a bit of a weak corner at the moment to me; needs some mass. But could be persuaded otherwise depending on rest of plan. Edwardian buildings on other side of the road are quite high, certainly no point in being any lower than those and need to get the efficiencies from a decent bit of scale. Zero parking.
Actually Patrick, it’s a quite good Ron Sang building of the mid 70s (Sang reading Athfield) that, sadly once again, has been stuffed; not a matter of nostalgia!
Sadly I think this is a fail for a couple of salient reasons. Saying that, I recognise that there are considerable financial constraints on AT in its ability to deliver a workable solution for this network critical station; but this is not the answer.
It fails primarily because the design doesn’t recognise that this is a key interchange station between the Outer Link bus service and the rail network; this all important connection isn’t addressed in the current proposal. If we are to have a properly integrated PT network and we can’t get this particular nexus point right then we’re stuffed; from a user perspective this is a disaster.
It also fails to address the abysmal state of the station surrounds. This blog’s former admin used to make some quite pithy observations on the co-relation between the appearance of a network and its ability to attract passengers and I’d suggest that this is a critical point. The proposal fails to remedy the fact that the current station is a dog, largely I must point out, from the failure of local property owners – including KiwiRail – to address the fact that the environs are basically a slum. Patrick Reynolds is (as usual) quite right to point out the need for AT to coordinate more effectively with AC but it would appear from recent form that AT is, in its determination to corporatise its identity as a separate body from AC, is quite happy to go it alone.
Effective resolution of these all too common issues will be a benchmark as to how serious AT is about integrated travel. While the current proposal may be a distinct improvement on the what’s presently available, it fails to recognise how important Mt Albert train station is to making PT a viable travel option in Auckland.
This is the short-term upgrade. Buses, you may notice, don’t travel on the rails, and except for the ped bridges, all this is in rail land, and needs to be done quick-quick before electrification. Whether or not this will really be a step-change will be seen when they show us the town centre upgrade plans they are still working on.
Completely agree the whole public transport experience has to be great to improve uptake. To me the street lighting and the footpaths around the stations need to be improved to encourage people to walk to the stations. How safe do women feel walking home from a train station in dimlit streets? Lot’s of things subconsciously put off people from going on public transport.
Re the design I do wonder how all the gates are going to fit on the concourse if the connection is built from the carpark. Looks like it could cause alot of crowding with people going in and out from different directions. Not very future proofed but could be wrong without knowing dimensions.
The improvements are a bit of bandaid, I’m most concerned about the lengthy ramps to get into and out of the station. That to me is just a discouragement for people wanting to walk and use a train. If they want to make improvements I’d rather they waited a couple of years and used more funding to build tunnels under the tracks so people can get directly into the station at Wilcott and New North Rd. It seems the improvements are just to buy some time, until someone comes to the realisation that it doesn’t work so well. It’s a busy station and access has to be a top priority I would have thought.
I agree with the above comments. This upgrade is really a method to spend $10 million. The result is:
1, No increase in shelter on the approaches (actually less due to increased walkway length)
2, The addition of a lift at the eastern end thereby increasing maintenance costs.
3, The reduction of wheelchair access by removing the underpass access at the western end
4, No provision for turnstiles.
The only positive thing is that there will be more cover on the station platforms.
My suggestion would be to widen and cover the existing ramp down from Carrington Rd, possibly extend it to reduce gradient and add the cover on the station as shown. The western should be left much as it is as although far from ideal the replacement is also lacking. The whole site needs proper consideration in conjunction with an upgrade of the Mt Albert shops and would be probably be better off if the area above the station was offered up for lease to provide a new public space incorporating office/retail/residential development. In short there is better things the money could be spent on.
The above 2 comments have some misconceptions. Alot of issues are addressed by what is proposed. It is alot more safer and comfortable. There are provision for a lift from Wilcott and gates. Underpass solutions are not safe. It is better to be visible from above ground. The ramps are no issue. There are stairs at Wilcott and the ramp from New North Rd is just the same as walking the distance ie. it doesn’t loop around.
Yes the ideal situation would be a complete revitalisation of the area. My fear is that there is not a developer in Auckland that would or is capable of doing a decent job for this. Newmarket is case in point. The apartments do not add to the area. Developers seem to not understand the importance of visual appealing pleasing developments.
The provision for a lift does not actually mean a lift will be installed from day one but more likely put off to the never never…… anyway my comment is that a lift , or lifts, just increase installation and ongoing costs whereas a ramp is a much more cost effective solution. This applies to the Carrington Rd end especially where there is no real advantage in having a lift.
Re the old post office. I think it does have alot of merits due to the geometric shapes. The issue that destroys some of its appeal is that it is pressed up to the road and been added to.
It is surprising to find out it is a Ron Sang. To me he is responsible for the worst building in the CBD………the Choice Plaza. Happy to bowl that over.
I agree with the rest of you, that this station upgrade does not go far enough. Mt Albert station badly needs to be properly integrated into the adjacent shopping area.
I note that the proposed new East and West concourses seem to be big enough to house a single wheelchair-width ticket gate each and a ticket machine each. Looks like the sides of each concourse can be glassed-in. This will enable Mt Albert to be a gated station and that is a good thing for rail network revenue protection.
Would be great if the council could have a partnership with a developer for the area. Not sure that’s what they’re doing in Takapuna to open up to the water? It is difficult to have a cohesive development otherwise. Perhaps maybe a Department Store type complex could be bought in to compete with Westfield. Markets like on Ponsonby Rd. Alot of potential from it’s location. Bring vitality to train station suburbs to get people off roads.
Could do better.
I used to station all the time as I go to unitec i was just wondering if there was a start and finish time to this project? do you think the station will be close to any period of time.
See the linked Auckland Transport website at the start.
The station will NOT be closed (except for the odd weekend when rail isn’t running anyway). However, they will close the accesses at varying times (always keeping at least one open of course), so you may have to walk around to the other end for a few weeks…
I believe they are aiming at about Aug-Sep 2013 to complete it, and no specific closures.
Would be great if they could provide access not from the narrow Carrington Rd footpath. From the carpark/Plaza perhaps.
Would be great if the outer link could integrate with the station too. I can’t see the way to solve that one.
And yes maybe this is where public private partnerships could achieve a good result.
Otherwise it is hardly an ambitious project.
The platform should be extended as far as possible north to minimise walk distance to Carrington Rd buses. It seems that this could be accomodated with the present track alignment.
Oh, and something else that isn’t really clear from the design – the northernmost bridge to Carrington Road will have shelter to the top AND sides – just like the Newmarket Concourse has from Remuera Road. They confirmed that to the public during the meeting, I have been told.
Hopefully better than Newmarket, I wouldn’t really call those sides sheltered.
correct
Some useful comments in the postings but also some misunderstandings:
1. The timetable for the station upgrade is dictated by the 1 July 2013 go-live date for the electrification project so construction of all remaining stations on the network must be completed by then. Current plans are to commence work at Mount Albert during the 3 week block-of-line this Christmas when the platform will be cleared, the masts installed and the shelters, etc. installed – plus a start on replacing the north ramp with the new concourse and stairs/lift – changes to the southern access will not start until the northern access is completed and re-opened.
2. It is not correct to suggest there has been no planning to upgrade the adjacent town centre – the town centre upgrade (stage 1 at least) is already funded but work is contingent on some necessarily behind the scenes negotiations over acquisition and/or leasing of some key private property. This limits what can be said in public for now – it may take another 8-9 months but hopefully things will come together sooner.
3. The potential long term development of the town centre and station is just that – long term. For example, increased development potential is likely to be provided for in the new District Plan (the Unitary Plan which will be extensively consulted on from September) but this is unlikely to become operative for at least two years – longer if there are appeals.
4. Meantime we have a budget of $10 million for the station and $5 million for some associated town centre improvements – enough to do a bit more than a basic station but not everything we would like.
5. Better integration between rail and the Outer Link has been a priority but it will require extra millions to widen the Carrington Road Bridge – a business case has been put forward but we should not hold our breath.
Should the parking lot issue be sorted and a plaza built, what will be the fate of the kebab stand (arguably the best in the city)?