• PROJECTS
& DEVELOPMENTS
MAXIMISING THE BENEFITS OF AUCKLAND LIGHT RAIL Kathleen Bunting, Technical Director of Planning, Beca
The Government has released its long-awaited decision on the future of Auckland Light Rail – with light rail to run along a tunnelled route from Wynyard Quarter and past the University of Auckland to Mt Roskill, before surfacing and running at street level to Onehunga, Māngere town centre and the airport. The new 24km line, known as City Centre to Māngere (CC2M), will have up to 18 stations, with services running every five minutes – enabling up to 15,000 passengers per hour to ‘turn up and go’. The lead up to the light rail decision has created considerable excitement in relation to the project’s benefits – as well as much expected trepidation by those concerned about the project’s significant costs and potential effects. One of those in the ‘excited’ camp is Kathleen Bunting – Technical Director of Planning at Beca. In this article, Kathleen discusses the many ‘city shaping’ benefits CC2M will bring for Tāmaki Makaurau, and how these can be maximised.
How is CC2M ‘city shaping’? CC2M is quite rightly described, by Minister Robertson, Minister Wood, Mayor Goff and the Indicative Business Case (IBC) summary report, as a ‘city-shaping’ project - but what does that really mean? We can get an idea by looking at examples overseas, especially our nearest neighbours in Australia where light rail projects have recently been retrofitted into existing urban areas to revitalise and transform them (e.g. Sydney CBD, Parramatta and Newcastle). However, some of the city-shaping changes for Auckland will also be quite specific to our unique context, such as our particularly narrow urban isthmus, the cultural significance of both the land and waterbodies to Mana Whenua, and the differing social demographics along the proposed CC2M corridor.
A step change in access to places people live, work, learn and play I hope it’s becoming clear to the Auckland public that transporting
SURVEYING+SPATIAL
•
Issue 108 June 2022 11
