Well in this case anyway. Here is a suburban rail station in Melbourne, a train, a dog [for Stu], and a new apartment building going up in the background. Right next to the station. Someone got the planning regulations and building incentives right. Now that we are most of the way through upgrading the passenger service on Auckland’s rail network shouldn’t we be aligning land use up with this new opportunity? It would be a mistake to only have intensive dwelling options in the City Centre, particularly as land is cheaper out along the rail corridors, so these dwellings would be both more affordable and extremely well connected.
Follow the rail corridors on this map [hotter the colour the higher the value, grey means not residential, yet]… looks like a huge opportunity for a City Development Agency to me. And older centres like Papatoetoe, say, could do with an injection of construction and new residents.
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Within an accessible circle around each rail node, yes. All along the sides of the corridor, no.
Sure, but then with stations often 1km apart a 500m circle amounts to much the same thing, especially if there’s a cycling and walking path along the corridor too, linking dwellings an businesses to and through each station…. As the crows flies; the most important type of route for Active access.
Not much cycling or walking infrastructure I’ve seen so far from a train window. Some shitty poorly-insulated shoebox apartments, sure.
Exactly! That’s why I’m advocating for it.
“Some shitty poorly-insulated shoebox apartments” Agreed, but the fact that a lot of dismally designed, low quality apartments have gone up around Auckland in no way demonstrates that the basic concept is flawed.
The fault lies with lax building regulations that allow developers to make a quick buck by any means and compliant councils who lack the guts to regulate for proper quality control.
I have stayed with friends in Europe who own or rent well-built, spacious, comfortable apartments in the inner city and urban fringes. These are just ordinary folks on ordinary salaries but they can afford to live like this because in their countries there are tight local government controls on building standards and tenant/landlord rental agreements.
These things can be done. Regrettably, in Auckland no-one with the authority to do anything seems willing to take the necessary steps.
‘The fault lies with lax building regulations that allow developers to make a quick buck by any means and compliant councils who lack the guts to regulate for proper quality control.’
Yes, the former when Maurice Williamson relaxed building regs on industry lobbying [like self regulation of safety in the mining industry- that worked out well too didn’t it?], and the second when suburban focussed old Auckland City Council showed it and its officers had no care nor interest in the urban environment nor the people living there, by approving vile developments like the Scene and everything on Hobson/Nelson and bits of Newmarket.
This is the pattern where once a place is given over to motorway values then the land use crashes to low value industrial or slum landlording…. Khyber Pass, Newton, Hobson/Nelson etc.
Improve the regs, but also the performance and demands of the consenting authority, but also the local environment needs fixing too as that sets the value and therefore the aspirations of any developers.
Instead the coming RMA changes will swing power further towards short-focused developers and away from public stewards of any sort.
But the changes to the RMA will only loosen up what the land can be used for not the quality of the build. The quality of the build is dictated by the Building Act and there is no reason it can’t prescribe high standards for apartment construction.
Instead NZ has it the wrong way round. Very strict regulation on what the land can be used for and which is subject to the emotional reaction of the existing residents. But then if it does get through by some miracle, the denser housing has very little prescribed design standards meaning crappy stuff can be built.
Loosen up the use of the land (the only good thing about Houston is the lack of use of land zoning) so that more mixed use is possible and tighten design standards.
The Building Act does not control urban design.
Readers might be interested in a look at Chatswood in Sydney, where the station has more daily passengers than the whole Auckland rail system-
http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=1263959&page=2
Sydney is starting to do density quite well – where I live, 15 years ago was an industrial wasteland. Now there are 13,000 units here which is fairly well serviced by a rail line.
which station?
http://youtu.be/YA3hKwQipz8
Italian connection.
Superb posting.
i live in melbourne and its so great being near a train station no matter where you are. poor auckland you’re about 300 years behind..
Fantastic idea Patrick. The problem with the current unitary plan is that in the apartment/terrace housing zones they only allow 40% building coverage and require 2.5m front yards and 3m/5m/7m setbacks from side boundaries depending on height. This is far too restrictive and leads to little towers surrounded by less that useless yards. Because most titles have small areas 500m2 to 1000m2 unless a developer can purchase more than one site (fraught with difficulties ) the default mode is what I described above. Not exactly what I had in mind for a urban revival. Our planners still havent caught up with the realities of what will be produced by owners and developers from the crazy rules of the unitary plan.
+1
Need to eased the low height restriction around transport hub
Not just around the transport hub either. From the engineering point of view there is really no reason why apartments could not be built right on top of the stations.
Absolutely.
Especially at stations like Mt Albert where there are few competing interests.
Of course not against that but I often wonder if height is a bot of a red herring. I think minimum lot size is much more of a problem.
A 100sqm site could contain very nice 2-3 bedroom terraced housing with a small yard. I think that would be more popular in Auckland right now.
Not against high rise in the right location (and have happily lived in 8-10 storey apartment blocks) but perhaps dense rather than high is a good start. If we could double the average density in each suburb our housing issues would be solved without necessarily having to go to tall blocks.
“Because most titles have small areas 500m2 to 1000m2 unless a developer can purchase more than one site (fraught with difficulties )” which is why we need the Council to use its power of Compulsory Purchase to redevelop such areas with suitable section size and shape.
Yes, I agree with it all but ignoring VicRail smart colour livery and the 5 foot gauge, Melbourne trains go where there are ;people to carry, not through industrial wasteland (Southdown) Swamps (Hobson Bay) and arid desert (Wiri).
Plenty of Melbourne lines are the same. All the western lines traverse industrial wasteland out to Footscray, and some beyond. The werribie line is all industrial. The upfield line runs through up inhabited park land for kilometers, etc.
This edition of Transport Blog is excellent and has identified an issue that many of the public do not like but should become more agreeable as time goes by. Transport Node for Railway does make sense. The same is not as applicable where only Road based Public Transport is available. However again that does not mean that Higher density such as North Shore should not be encouraged.
Inching towards Rapid Transit service pattern, although finishes far too early… Note Papatoetoe and the other stations of the mid Southern Line get trains every 5 minutes each way at peak. Now that’s turn up and go!
https://at.govt.nz/bus-train-ferry/timetables/
Some great improvements to the timetables! Service through Papatoetoe is fantastic. Now is the time to at least double the frequency of the 380 bus service from Papatoetoe to the airport to fit with this improved train service. AT needs to promote this link as the major AT HOP PT link to the airport. Melbourne have just improved their airport bus/train link.. The 901 bus from Broadmeadows Station now runs every 15 minutes to the stop right outside Terminal 1 at Melbourne International Airport. I caught it last Tuesday. A pity the nice trains like in the photo in this article aren’t running on the Broadmeadows line just yet! MYKI fare of $6.06 to the city and onwards on other trains or trams certainly beats their Skybus price. (equivalent of our “Airbus” service in Auckland).
Yes and the stop needs to be moved to be as close as possible to the platforms if people are to be expected to schlep their bags between bus and train; wouldn’t be hard.