The Waitematā Local Board will consider these plans on Tuesday.
Fears of dingy backstreets, inadequate space for pedestrians, poor traffic management and cars where they don’t need to be. Auckland Transport (AT) has come under sustained fire over its plans for the streets around the City RailLink’s new Karanga-a-Hape railway station.
It’s also been accused of ignoring public opinion, after different plans gained strong public support in 2023.
In response to these complaints, AT has now produced a new plan. But it’s almost exactly the same as the previous one.
One critic says the whole project is “probably the most egregious example” of how Auckland Transport approaches public consultation.
Last week Connor Sharp, from the urban development lobby group Greater Auckland, told a meeting of Auckland Council, “They repeatedly water down plans that have public support. This undermines trust and confidence and does nothing to appease whichever small group is protesting. They might think they’re trying to please everyone, but that pleases no one.”
Greater Auckland has written to AT asking it to “reverse [its] recent and unconsulted changes” for the area.
The letter is signed by 134 groups and individuals, including the City Centre Residents Group, the Public Transport Users Association (PTUA), local business people like art gallery owner Michael Lett and the local MP, Chlöe Swarbrick.
The new plan will be considered by the Waitematā Local Board in a workshop on Tuesday.
But AT executive Murray Burt doesn’t accept the criticisms.
He says the plan will “vastly improve walking and cycling access to the station” and they have “tried to balance the rights” of the different users of the area.
“We’re very happy with where we’re currently landing,” he says.
Not everyone opposes the new AT plan. Local board chair Genevieve Sage told the Herald she is “generally supportive”.
And some residents of the George Court building, which occupies the block between Karangahape Rd and Cross St, lobbied hard against the original pedestrianisation of Mercury Lane, believing it would make their building hard to service.
“The key thing that all stakeholders want to see being achieved by AT,” said Sage, “is an optimal outcome that balances the needs of users, ratepayers, local businesses and AT as the entity responsible for delivering transport solutions.”
The dispute is over what that optimal outcome might be.
The City Rail Link (CRL) is scheduled to open next year, doubling the capacity of Auckland’s rail network. By linking all the rail lines, with more trains and faster access to the city centre, it will offer an easier commuting option to everyone living and working anywhere on the network.
The budget is $5.5 billion, shared equally between the Government and council, but that money is being spent on the tunnels, lines and stations.
Outside on the streets there’s a different approach. Critics say the low-budget approach to the Karanga-a-Hape neighbourhood threatens to undermine the purpose of that big spend.
The view from the station: Passengers emerging from the CRL's Karanga-a-Hape station on Mercury Lane will look directly down Cross St, which Auckland Transport will not be changing much from this. Photo / Simon Wilson
“This is not a welcoming, safe, accessible plan,” councillor Richard Hills told the Herald.
Hills, who chairs the council’s policy and planning committee, thinks it’s “still only semi-coherent”.
Central to the concept of the CRL is the idea that people will want to use the service because it rewards them: they feel good to be there, not just on the trains and the platforms, but also in the areas around the stations.
This, it is hoped, will give the CRL a vital role in making the city centre a place where Aucklanders and visitors want to be. If it does this well, it will be a kickstarter for economic and social progress.
In pursuit of this idea, a plan for a lively, pedestrian-focused precinct around the Karanga-a-Hape station was created in 2022 and put through a major public consultation process in 2023.
It gained 68% support, which is unusually high. Only 19% of respondents were opposed.
This plan builds on the City Centre Masterplan (CCMP) and Access for Everyone (A4E), council plans dating back to 2012 that also gained clear support after extensive public engagement.
The CCMP envisages a pedestrian-friendly city centre, while A4E describes where and how traffic will be able to move efficiently around and through the city, without undermining the pedestrian focus.
The underlying principle of A4E is that vehicles that don’t need to be in a particular place shouldn’t be there. Residents, businesses, service vehicles and so on, yes. Just passing through? No.
The Karanga-a-Hape station precinct was going to be the first example. A test case, if you like.
The original plan for the Karanga-a-Hape precinct, showing a strong pedestrian focus and extensive efforts to "beautify" the area. The new plan has almost none of the greenery and through-access for cars on several of the streets.
But AT has barely mentioned the CCMP in its plans and not mentioned A4E at all. Now it’s accused of abandoning them altogether, in favour of a more car-focused approach.
Cross St, for example, is the potentially dangerous side street that rail passengers will be confronted with when they exit the station on Mercury Lane, just down from K Rd.
The original redesign allowed vehicles in and out of Cross St but stopped them from driving through. It removed general on-street car parking, improved the lighting, added planting and other “beautification” elements and created a wide pedestrian walkway.
The City Centre Masterplan envisages that “Cross Street will become a vibrant secondary laneway linkage in the future, complementing the main street status of Karangahape Road”.
Now, AT intends to reinstate the ability to drive through, remove the wide walkway and most of the beautification elements, put back some public car parks and add loading zones to both sides of the street.
There will be one extra streetlight, while “traffic calming” measures have been eliminated and there are no proposals to make the street welcoming and safe in any other way.
AT says Cross St must remain accessible for vehicles. There are many off-street car parks inside the buildings, while commercial premises like the popular Lim Chhour supermarket and food hall need loading zones and access for service vehicles.
The street must also provide mobility parking and ride-share parking.
But none of these functions were at risk from the redesign. They’ve been retained throughout.
Sharp says the latest plan will make Cross St more dangerous for pedestrians, because they won’t be well separated from vehicles, even though the neighbourhood will soon see thousands more people walking through.
He suggests this will also make it less efficient for loading and other service vehicles, because pedestrians will be in their way.
Then there’s Mercury Lane itself, which runs from Karangahape Rd down past Cross St and the station, to join Canada St at the bottom, just near Te Ara i Whiti, the Pink Pathway.
The original plan, with that strong support, was to pedestrianise Mercury Lane completely. AT rejected that last year, with the support of council, in favour of making it a “shared space” through street, in which bollards could be raised to stop traffic if required.
AT intends to reopen Mercury Lane with the bollards down and see how it goes.
Sharp told council last week that letting traffic through was “a bad idea then and it’s still a bad idea”. And because it ignored the original public consultation result, “it’s still a breach of the process”.
Sage seems to agree. “Personally, I’m in favour of limiting vehicular access [on upper Mercury Lane] to emergency and service vehicles, and residents, only.”
Mercury Lane used to be a one-way rat run down the hill from K Rd, but the new proposal is to make it one way leading up to K Rd. It will disgorge cars onto K Rd at an intersection where there are a lot of people walking by.
Hills says the plans for Cross St and Mercury Lane “have the potential to create a rat run right through a busy pedestrian zone”.
“It’s kind of weird, but the station will get stuck in the middle of traffic”.
Nearby East St, which runs parallel to Mercury Lane, will have the bike lane on it removed, so it can become a two-way street for cars.
Sage doesn’t support that. She says, “The Karangahape Road Business Association would like to see the two-way cycleway retained between South St and the Lightpath [Te Ara i Whiti].”
AT says its new plans arise from “feedback with businesses”. But business feedback was generally supportive of the original plans.
Sharp said it’s “the sort of thing that undermines public faith in the council. Why bother to participate if the rug can be pulled out from under you?”
Councillor Andy Baker, who chairs the transport, resilience and infrastructure committee, told Sharp: “No decisions have been made. Auckland Transport is continuing to work with the local board and residents and businesses.”
Michael Lett, who owns one of those businesses, told AT, “Please, AT, be brave. Give us something to be proud of. Build a city for grown-ups. And stop with the ‘meh’.”
At the council meeting, Mayor Wayne Brown told Sharp, “I have some sympathy with what you’re saying ... Keep your little voice bleating out there, mate.”
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.
