KEY POINTS:
For 30 years Chris Orr has come into Newmarket Station on the South Auckland train with his guide dogs and followed a familiar route.
But yesterday the old station was not there when the train stopped and they got out to walk to his office at the other
end of the business centre.
During the long weekend it had closed and been replaced by a temporary south station at a place up the line.
"I am learning two new platforms and an extended route," said Mr Orr. "A guide dog instructor came with me to familiarise me with the layout of the platform."
Blind since he was 21, Mr Orr is community education and awareness manager for the Royal Foundation for the Blind.
It is based in Newmarket, making the station the country's busiest for blind passengers.
He said the plan to use temporary stations for southern and western lines while a new central station was being built meant a big adjustment for the foundation's blind clients.
"For some people it has meant more than just learning to use the south station, like me.
"Those using the west station are learning totally different routes with different traffic patterns, pedestrian densities and lot of new landmarks.
"A person with a guide dog uses different techniques to finding their way to a cane user. Cane users use clues on the ground they can find and hit, say a lamp-post, they will find that with a cane, whereas a guide dog won't because it's taught to avoid that. "For me, when I was walking down, I knew that when the building line finished, that two metres past, you had to make a left turn into the approaches to the station and then another couple of metres from there to find the ramp going down on the platform. I had to do that by hearing, as opposed to the touch on the ground."
Mr Orr said it had not been easy getting clients up to speed with station changes and learning new routes.
But he said the Auckland Regional Transport Authority and rail service provider Ontrack had given plenty of notice and kept the foundation briefed.
"It's only day one but it's been OK. Arta and Ontrack adopted the principle that if the design worked for us, it would work for everyone."
Mr Orr said blind passengers had a choice of a 10-minute walk between stations or staying on their train and going to Britomart and transferring to a western or southern line service.
Newmarket junction is getting a $65 million upgrade.
Transport agencies said they received no passenger complaints about the first day of the temporary setup for the project.
Auckland Regional Council chairman Mike Lee said: "Commuters seem to be taking it in their stride so far.
"Trains will for two years continue to run through what is a confined construction site in the middle of a busy shopping district, which means the project is not without its challenges.
"Once this work is completed, Auckland will be able to run trains on the network every 10 minutes."
