Take a walk: Aotea Station, City Rail Link

In the latest edition of our "Take a Walk" series we explore the site of Auckland's planned new Aotea Station, part of the $3.4 billion City Rail Link (CRL).

This will be New Zealand's largest train station, built between Albert St, Wellesley St, Victoria St and Bledisloe Lane.

At the corner of Wellesley St and Albert St in the centre of Auckland's central business district, we look across to a carpark and Bledisloe House, to the station's site. This is near one of the entrance ways to a crucial new part of the network that's being built in Auckland now.

At 15m below ground, this is how the inside of Aotea Station might look.

A huge building shown in CRL's fly-through doesn't exist yet but beneath will be New Zealand's busiest train station. Note the large Albert St entrance way – the block-wide station will have many different entrance points off the streets.

On Wellesley St, we're outside one of the entrances. It doesn't look at the moment like there's going to be all this development work. In the fly-through, we see a big, tall building here: It could be an office building, could be a hotel, could be apartments. That doesn't exist at the moment. What we've got is the Griffiths Garden and we've also got a carpark.

Welcome to the future, experiencing the station from a passenger's point of view. This station will be 15m below ground in the mid-town area. See the indigenous art on the walls? A distinctively Tāmaki Makaurau station.

It's planned to be like nothing you've ever experienced before, with international-standard amenities to ease congestion and cope with the thousands of people down here daily.

The tunnels will take single-storey trains, and already people are talking of how popular trains will be.

Previous editions of the "Take a Walk" series:

• Episode 1: Halsey Street
• Episode 2: St James
• Episode 3: Albert Street
• Episode 4: NZICC