City Rail Link: Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown replanning Maungawhau railway station

Empty land surrounding the Maungawhau Railway Station currently under construction. Photo / Sylvie Whinray

There’s an enormous dirt patch in Mt Eden right now, surrounding the site of the new Maungawhau (Mt Eden) Railway Station. And according to Mayor Wayne Brown, there are big question marks about whether buses, taxis, ride shares like Uber and private vehicles will be able to drive all the way to the station.

Brown was furious about this a few weeks ago. He called the site “Gaza lite” and said it was ridiculous expecting passengers to have to “walk 250 metres in the rain” to get to the train.

Last week, though, in an exclusive interview with the Herald, he said he had found the answer to both problems.

He’s redesigned the bus routes and has a bold idea for developing the site.

First, the bus routes and access to the station.

At a council meeting on June 5, he said, “You’ve got a major railway station you can’t get to by car, you walk in the rain, you couldn’t get an ambulance there, a fire engine or a bus.

AT officials at the meeting explained that this was wrong, as the plans do include provision for emergency services and also for taxis and ride shares. In fact, the site already features a road running past the station.

Since the meeting, AT has revealed that Fire and Emergency NZ, Police and Hato Hone St John have all been engaged in the design process.

But the officials didn’t tell the meeting what was intended for private vehicles and they did confirm that buses will not run to the station.

Maungawhau is near, but not on, several major bus routes, because the site is between the two arterials of Mt Eden Rd and New North Rd. Both roads carry strings of buses all day long.

Since that council meeting, AT has presented the mayor with three options for rethinking road access to the station. He likes one of them.

This option is for a road to connect the two arterials. The little Ruru St on New North Rd would be extended right through the site, so it forms a larger road than the one currently there, running past the front of the new station then dog-legging out to Mt Eden Rd.

Brown wants buses coming up New North Rd to turn right into Ruru St, stop at the station, and continue out to Mt Eden Rd, turn left and continue into the city. Buses coming up Mt Eden Rd would do the reverse. The station would be the fulcrum for a figure-of-eight bus system.

As he points out, the original artist’s impressions for the site show a road running past the station in exactly this way.

“They say there’d be problems with the traffic lights, but you can phase the lights,” he says. “I pointed that out to them and even AT agrees about the bus routes now.”

The scheme has its critics. Matt Lowrie of Greater Auckland believes there are too many buses for this to work efficiently and bus passengers travelling further into the city may not like having their trip times extended. He says it won’t be a big interchange station anyway and there are already other places, like Kingsland, where bus passengers can change for the train.

The existing road running from Mt Eden Rd to the station. Mayor Brown's plan means this will become a bigger road. Photo / Sylvie Whinray

As for the plans for the empty site, they’ve been developed by Eke Panuku, the council’s “placemaking agency”. But Eke Panuku will cease to exist on June 30: it’s being swallowed up by the main council organisation, as part of Brown’s reform of the “council-controlled organisations” (CCOs).

They didn’t know what they were doing, Brown told the Herald, although he used slightly more colourful language.

Their plan, Brown says, was to parcel the land up into several “satellite” sites: individual blocks that would be offered to developers over time. This is the usual way big sites are developed.

Kāinga Ora, the Government’s housing agency, was to have one of the Maungawhau sites, but the Government has put a moratorium on most of its projects. Kāinga Ora is regarded as a non-starter.

But Brown says it will be much better to offer the whole site to the market as one big lot.

“I know there are several developers who are keen on that,” he said. “They’re big enough, they’ve got a good record, and it works for them. It works for us too.”

He says the council doesn’t need to decide which parts of the site get built when, or where “all the walkways go, the pocket parks, all those things that Eke Panuku has been trying to decide itself”.

All they need to do is tell the developer where it can’t build “in case it collapses the tunnels underground, then let them get on with it”.

How quickly does he think he can get things started?

“Oh, I’d say two months.”

He explained that in the legal documents establishing the CRL company, he had discovered there are two sponsors.

“Two sponsors! That’s all. It’s me. Me and the minister. And the one we’ve got now, he’s pretty good.”

This was a reference to Chris Bishop, the Minister of Transport, and perhaps obliquely to his predecessor, Simeon Brown.

“So we get to make the decisions. We can get cracking.”

Artist's impression of the Maungawhau station, showing a road running directly past.

Does Minister Bishop agree the site should be offered as one big lot, and quickly?

“Yes he does.”

The Herald told the minister that the mayor says he’s on board with this plan and asked him to comment.

Bishop responded, “The Mayor and I agree that development around Mt Eden has been a mess and work is underway between the council and the Government to fix it. We have to do better to take advantage of this multibillion-dollar investment in Auckland.”

Simon Wilson is a senior writer covering politics, the climate crisis, transport, housing, urban design and social issues, with a focus on Auckland. He joined the Herald in 2018.