ARC presses for Parnell train station

Photo / APN

KiwiRail and Auckland's Super City council will be urged to make an early start on a $13 million-plus Parnell train station centred around Newmarket's former heritage railway building.

The Auckland Regional Council is calling on the state-owned railway company to put $4.2 million of remaining funds budgeted for the relocation of the Newmarket Station heritage building toward the Parnell project.

In its final meeting before a winding-up ceremony next month, it has passed a resolution recommending that the new station be built on a large KiwiRail site now partly occupied by a heritage steam train trust in the gully between Cheshire St and Auckland Domain.

It wants the 112-year-old Newmarket building, which went into storage in 2007 under a $5 million Government relocation grant to KiwiRail, to be erected along one of two new platforms at Parnell.

And it is recommending that the new Auckland Council, with its transport subsidiary, teams up with KiwiRail to ensure an early start on the project to avoid having to re-do electrification-enabling work scheduled to begin by next August.

The resolutions follow the development of a concept design for the new station by the Auckland Regional Transport Authority, in conjunction with KiwiRail.

A regional council staff report said an estimated cost of $13.2 million to $15.2 million included $5.5 million to re-grade about a kilometre of railway tracks and the relocation of cross-over points for trains approaching The Strand and Britomart.

Modification of access tracks to the Mainline Steam Trust depot would also be required.

But the report said KiwiRail's plan to start electrification-enabling works beneath its Parnell tunnel in July or August meant the Super City council and the new Transport Auckland organisation should lose no time in deciding whether to build a new station, to avoid "costly reworking".