KEY POINTS:
Government rail agency Ontrack is despairing at Auckland Regional Council resistance to "grandiose" plans for a new $70 million-plus station at Newmarket.
Ontrack chief executive David George yesterday unveiled a $40 million scheme for the lower part of the station and a reconfiguration of the Newmarket railway junction with three sets of tracks and two new island platforms.
That compares with two existing tracks around a single platform, from which west-bound trains spend about four minutes reversing up a siding in a clumsy three-point manoeuvre.
Mr George also announced $20 million to complete the Government's duplication of the western railway line with double tracks between Newmarket and Boston Station, which may be moved to a site closer to the Domain and Auckland City Hospital.
"This is already provided for by the Crown, so it is not an issue for you - the money is already committed," he told the regional council's transport policy committee, referring to the $60 million total.
But the Auckland Regional Transport Authority wants $31.4 million from the council for a swept-up station superstructure, including two elevated concourses above the platform, one at each end.
That would push the cost to $71.4 million, including $5 million for relocating its century-old buildings.
Councillors' concern about Ontrack's part, which chairman Mike Lee claimed showed little appreciation of the need for rapid transit to western suburbs, grew when the authority revealed a conceptual "walk through" of the superstructure wrapped in a giant see-through canopy.
He called it grandiose and won support for resolutions asking the transport authority to put more work into developing an alternative two-station model for Newmarket, including permanent platforms at Kingdon St off Broadway for western line passengers, and to consider retaining the existing station for southbound trains.
Ontrack's proposal includes only temporary platforms at Kingdon St, until the Newmarket Station re-development is completed in mid-2009, although it also provides for a direct rail link between Britomart and the western line for special services such as to events at Eden Park.
Mr George said a three-track configuration through Newmarket offered the greatest operating flexibility in a confined space.
Newmarket is becoming crowded out by high-rise apartments on land sold by his agency's Railways Corporation parent in 1993 as surplus to requirements.
Mr George said indecision about Newmarket would "throw the project. We have only one shot at this.
"Ontrack is geared up - we don't need to do more studies - the need is for action if Auckland is to get a 10-minute service in the next three years."
The computer presentation - which the transport authority has refused to supply for publication in the Herald despite having shown it at a public meeting - also depicted the station's main building at a southern gateway to the station, perched on a concourse beside Remuera Rd.
Newmarket Business Association general manager Cameron Brewer said "the 1909 station looks completely out of place sitting under a huge Star Trek-like canopy."
The transport authority's architectural consultants warn that raising the building above the tracks "could result in an incongruous appearance", but the authority and the Historic Places Trust consider it the best of nine possible locations.
