transport
Disruptions to the train link Onehunga to Britomart due to work on the City Rail Link have angered public transport advocates
From this Friday, all Onehunga trains will terminate at Newmarket, in a move critics have labeled a ‘death plan’ for public transport links to the Auckland suburb.
Due to the construction of City Rail Link which has reduced the number of platforms at Britomart Station, passengers wishing to reach the CBD from Onehunga or vice versa must board at Newmarket.
The Auckland Transport announcement tried to soften the blow by saying there are easy and frequent transfers at Newmarket station, with the southern and eastern lines running every 10 minutes at peak times, and buses are also available.
But the Association of Public Transport Users has hit back, saying the move passengers is the agency’s final consideration.
Association president Niall Robertson said 60 percent of passengers on this line wanted to go all the way to Britomart, which will soon be a more difficult feat due to the shortened service.
It is an even greater difficulty for the young, old or disabled as they are asked to move quickly from one platform to another.
Robertson said it was in line with the agency’s proposed idea of a $30 billion light rail to the airport deal, which he said could jeopardize the future of the already-existing Onehunga line.
“It seems AT senior management has a plan to kill the Onehunga line, hence their recent idea of shuttle trains to Penrose and now this,” he said.
Meanwhile, the association’s national coordinator, Jon Reeves, said the decision was based on “silence, zero public consultation and general incompetence” from a “faceless senior management”.
“Passengers are AT’s last consideration on this big mistake,” he said.
The association calls on the municipality to show all the alternatives they considered before pulling the trigger.
“The tail wags the dog,” Reeves said. “AT destroys good public transport services while the mayor and aldermen hide behind their faceless officials.”
Former Auckland councilor Mike Lee has a personal connection to the line. As a councillor, he worked for years to finally bring the disused Onehunga branch back to life in 2010.
In his speech at the station’s reopening in September 2010, he said the crowd was the largest he’d ever seen at a station opening — including Britomart’s grand ribbon cutting in 2003.
He questioned the decision to rectify a vital service at a time when the council was ostensibly trying to get more and more people on public transport – as evidenced by the recent ‘Let’s Go There’ advertising campaign.
“AT’s plan will only reduce patronage at a time when we should be encouraging more, not less, zero-emission public transportation,” Lee said. “There are far better passenger-friendly solutions than cutting this popular ‘Queen Street to Queen Street’ service to its knees.”
Lee said he had heard from railway workers that they do not believe Onehunga scheduled services at Newmarket should be terminated as four lines and four platforms at Britomart will remain open during construction – one platform for each line. One platform is currently used for the ‘hot spare’ EMU train, which is used during service disruptions.
“If one of the platforms closes with the tunnel construction work, the hot spare could instead be siding behind KFC on Quay Street, with the crew nearby at the adjacent Strand depot,” Lee said.
Before 2010, breathing life into the disused Onehunga line was something of a cause célèbre among the local community. It had originally been a link between the port of Onehunga Wharf and the rest of the city – and indeed the only railway line to reach the east coast.
Passenger services ran until 1973, when it was put on ice. But an 8,000-strong petition from people in the area helped restart train service to the suburb.
But the idea of bringing the railroad back to life wasn’t supported by everyone, and Lee said some of the same people who opposed it now support the decision to shorten the service.
“I note that it is the same individuals in AT that I well remember who are stubbornly resisting the recommissioning of the Onehunga branch, who are now the AT executives who are shutting down this service,” he said. “AT is paid hundreds of millions of dollars a year by taxpayers in Auckland to provide public transportation to the public. But again, we’re seeing the public’s ease of travel come last in the considerations of AT bureaucrats. AT shows once again that it doesn’t care or even cares much about the needs of commuters in public transport.”
Lee was in attendance with John Key and then-Mayor Len Brown at Britomart in June 2016 when construction of the City Rail Link was launched.
“All kinds of wonderful things were promised at the time,” he said. “I think 2021 was the end date. Six years later, maybe 50 meters from the controlled explosion that signaled the start of work, AT are planning to cripple a service their managers have always opposed. It says a lot about it.” the competence of the management that dominates the city.There are better ways, more intelligent [ways] to manage this work than to sabotage a popular train service and put city-bound Onehunga commuters on a platform in Newmarket one winter morning to wait for another train.”