A repost on a proposal I made to Auckland’s Skyscrapercity forum on 21 August 2009. The proposal was that the railway for the North Shore should be routed via Devonport and the peninsula up to Takapuna, rather than the now default proposal for it to merge with the Northern Motorway around the area of Northcote Point or the Onewa Rd interchange.
We hear that Auckland will absorb something like half a million extra residents by 2050 (now people think it might be more). Nobody wants to put this additional population in the ever sprawling suburban hellzones that have grown up around Auckland’s fringes, instead the desire is to intensify existing urban areas. I believe Takapuna and the Devonport peninsula are perfect for this kind of intensification. The area is relatively flat, it’s a desirable place to live, it offers good recreation, and it’s close to employment areas.
Proper planning would see some medium density intensification around Devonport. Low to medium intensification northwards up the peninsula to Takapuna. With Takapuna potentially intensified to the same degree as Vancouver’s west end (below), allowing the area to absorb over 100 thousand new residents. And it goes without saying that public transport should underpin this, giving these residents rapid connections directly to Takapuna, Albany, and Auckland’s CBD.
On the other hand, the route currently planned for the railway runs along a motorway where nobody currently lives, where nobody wants to live, and which has no real opportunity for good intensification even if you forced people to live there. The catchment along this section will always be poor, it will consist primarily of transfers from busses from the western North Shore. Making a transfer at Onewa interchange when these western busses could simply run the last few kilometers into the city makes little sense.
Takapuna and the Devonport peninsula will intensify to some degree anyway, the question is how much, and will it be well planned. And when it does will we have built the right transport infrastructure to support it (it’s already choking on vehicle traffic).