Why is the Western Line so slow?
Yesterday I caught up with a bunch of fellow transport enthusiasts and we all trundled out to Swanson Station, near the end of the Western Line, to have lunch. It was a good chance for me to actually see all the Western Line (with day-passes we all caught the train out to Waitakere station after lunch and then rode it back to town), as I hadn’t been past Henderson in a great number of years.…
18 Comments Avondale: nice station but where’s the shelter?
On the weekend I finally got around to visiting the newly opened Avondale train station. The station is fairly simple, but I suppose that’s all that could be really expected as it’s not a major interchange station like New Lynn or Newmarket.…
Western Line duplication complete
While there hasn’t been too much of a song and dance about it, today is actually a pretty momentous day in the history of Auckland’s rail system – in that the double-tracking of the Western Line, a project that has been underway for many years now, has finally been completed – with the second half of the New Lynn trench opening today.…
Work begins on Onehunga Station (finally)
At long last, today we finally have some visible work going on constructing the Onehunga Station. I dropped by to take a few photos:
I must say there was a time when I was worried if the Onehunga Line was ever going to happen, that it might just randomly disappear off ARTA’s list of “to do” projects.…
New Lynn station: taking shape
On the weekend I went out to take some photos of New Lynn train station, to see what progress is being made on its redevelopment. One half of the rail trench opened back in March, and since then there has been a lot of additional work on building the other half of the trench, as well as constructing the station building that will sit on top of the trench.…
Transport in the next five years
Having finally got the 30 year Regional Land Transport Strategy completed, it’s important to look at the question “where to next?” This is particularly important to consider when you realise how the whole management of transport in Auckland is going to be revolutionised in the next few months, with the creation of the Auckland Transport CCO.…
Avondale Station: nearly there
I had a brief look at progress on the Avondale train station today, and it seems as though we’re nearly there in terms of the station being ready for opening. One of the workers on the site said that they were to be done by Monday, although he didn’t know when the station would be opening.…
Rail performance stats getting better
It’s heartening to see that the performance statistics of Auckland’s rail system are slowly but surely improving. As shown in the diagram below, on the Western Line in particular we’ve got from three months of sub-50% punctuality statistics for January, February and March, to a much better result of 72.7%.…
Onehunga Line: slow progress
There’s an item in the agenda of the upcoming (on Wednesday) ARC Transport and Urban Development Committee meeting about the Onehunga Branch Line and the progress that is being made towards ensuring that the line can be opened in the not too distant future.…
Real-time rail displays happening… eventually
Buried away in the March 2010 ARTA monthly business report is a promising update on the likelihood that we’re edging towards getting some real-time information signs at our railway stations. It has been a very long-lasting bugbear of mine that we have managed to put in place real-time information displays for the bus network – which must be a fairly difficult task of using GPS to locate buses, estimating the time it will take them from their current location to you, ensuring that you can display buses heading to a variety of destinations on a fairly simple sign, and so forth.…
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