It has already spurred private-sector investment of around $6 billion in the midtown area alone. Auckland Council planners have worked to create attractive mixed-use neighbourhoods around the three key City Rail Link (CRL) stations, improving access, walkability and integration with other forms of public transport.
Simon Oddie says transforming Auckland’s city centre is not just important for the wider city but for the nation. “The city centre produces about $33 billion of the nation’s GDP each year. It covers 4.5 square kilometres or 5.5% of the total city area, but it accounts for 20% of the city’s output and about 8% of national GDP.”
That makes it the most productive patch of land in the country – it’s equivalent to the entire Waikato region.
Oddie, who works as priority location director for the City Centre Lead Agency, says it is the only dense urban area of its kind in Aotearoa.
“We’re starting to broaden our understanding of what the city centre is. We used to call it the central business district, it’s still very much about business, but it has become so much more. Today it is home to a huge number of residents.
“It is home to two of the nation’s largest universities and that means there are around 70,000 students in the city. A large proportion of them reside in the city centre.
“It is important from the experience perspective. Where else can you get access to some of the best restaurants, the best cafes, Waitematā Harbour, the ability to get to the islands and the different experiences that are there? We have something for everyone. There is nowhere else in the country that can sustain such a diversity of activities.”
For Oddie, one of the key things about the city centre is that it is a place where people come to meet each other face-to-face. That’s important in an increasingly digital world.
This puts the council’s planning for the immediate areas around the three city centre stations into perspective. Oddie says Te Waihorotiu, Karanga-a-Hape and Waitematā (formerly Britomart) have been the focus of the council’s investment for the last decade.
“We’re investing in surface-level public transport, making sure we have walkable neighbourhoods so that when people arrive on trains, they can get where they need to go quickly and safely. We’ve developed laneways and made land available for developers so we can create the mixed-use station networks that were first envisaged in the city-centre master plan.”
Parul Sood, Auckland Council’s deputy director of infrastructure and resilience, applies high-level thinking to the station neighbourhoods.
She starts by asking what Auckland wants to tell the world: what do overseas visitors see when they step off a cruise ship? What do people see when they step off a train? “We spent a lot of time getting the design right. We want to tell people about our partnership with mana whenua [local Māori with territorial rights].
“This is our opportunity to showcase who and what we are.”
Beyond sending the right impressions, Sood wants to create places that people will want to visit. This includes making areas safe and walkable, using trees to provide shade, and pleasant spots for people to sit.
Sood’s colleague Jenny Larking, the council’s head of city centre programmes, describes the CRL as a gateway for people visiting the city and the environment surrounding the railway stations as the city’s welcome mat.
She says: “When we develop the projects, we engage very closely with what is a diverse community and we are responsive to them, as well as mana whenua. We work with private sector developers, business owners and anyone who might be providing city experiences. We take care to bring our story while being responsive to the community and allowing them to make use of the places.”
Te Komititanga, Waitematā Station for Project Auckland
Larking says that over time, the CRL will be as instrumental in shaping how we see and use Auckland as the Harbour Bridge, which changed the face of the city more than 60 years ago. “It will be a catalyst propelling the city to evolve.”
Auckland Transport programme director Eric van Essen says his organisation has been working on projects to improve access beyond the immediate areas around the new stations. “For the last 12 months, we’ve worked on extending the bus lanes at the top of town around Karangahape Rd into Pitt St, Vincent St and Mayoral Drive through to downtown.”
The idea is to create the north-south connections to maximise the benefit of the CRL and help people move quickly to different parts of the city centre.
“[The] City Rail [Link] gives us the opportunity to create an extreme form of integration and connectivity. It’s not just bus and rail, it’s also with cycling, walking and with scooters or whatever mode you choose.
“The cycleways connect Karanga-a-Hape to Te Waihorotiu Station, where one of its portals opens on to Te Hā Noa-Victoria St.
“There’s the city’s busiest cycleway on Quay St that links with Waitematā Station.
“We’re now putting the last pieces into that jigsaw so that when CRL opens, everything is fully connected. When you step out of the rail, you’ll have many more options to move across the city.”
Walking around the city will be easier with wider paths, trees and better flows.
Van Essen says Te Hā Noa will be a more pleasant experience than the poor footpaths and busy traffic that characterised Victoria St in the past. “It’s a place where you might stop and sit for a coffee, enjoy your lunch outside under the shade of a tree and have a chat.”
Auckland Transport is also working to mesh the suburban bus network into this integrated plan. That means, for example, routes from the North Shore passing through the city centre instead of terminating there.
Van Essen says business owners don’t like having bus engines idling or passengers queuing outside retail outlets or cafes.
“That requires a lot of kerb space and it is not attractive to have multiple double-deckers parked in the centre.
“Buses from the North Shore will now travel beyond the city centre to its periphery which is much more efficient and better for the customer. It also activates areas that, until now, may have been underused.”
