COMMENT FROM THE CAPITAL SCHEMES TO USE AIRSPACE ABOVE RAILWAYS TRACKS

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32810, 10 January 1972, Page 10

COMMENT FROM THE CAPITAL SCHEMES TO USE AIRSPACE ABOVE RAILWAYS TRACKS

(By a Parliamentary reporter)

For 30 years, ever since Wellington railway station was built, politicians and administrators have talked airily about using the airspace above the tracks for building.

The idea is eminently logical. Around the country the Railways Department owns more than 70,000 acres of land, most of it occupied only by tracks. As one railways official puts it, for most of the day the air above the land is used only up to a height of about four inches, with intermittent uses of up to one storey (when trains pass).

In rural areas this sort of use compares with the use of the surrounding land. But in the cities, particularly the big cities where ground space is reaching a premium, the use of land only for railway tracks in the city centre is becoming faintly absurd.

Commonplace overseas

Overseas, particularly in the United States, the use of airspace above tracks and, more recently, above motorways, is becoming commonplace. The giant Pan-Arn building in New York, the largest commercial building in the world, stands over the city’s Central Station. Some 45 years ago a huge merchandise mart was built over airspace at Chicago. In Australia successful projects have been built in Melbourne and North Sydney, and projects are planned for other Australian cities. The nearest New Zealand has come to emulating this sort of development has been the joint Railways-City Council redevelopment plan in Hamilton.

Some years ago the Rail- , ways trenched below ground the East Coast branch railway which goes through the heart of the city. Five acres and a half of previously sterile land, in an oblong reaching back from Victoria Street, the main commercial street, and at right angles to the Waikato River, thus becomes free for redevelopment. Abutting this land, and forming an “L” with it were four acres and a half the Hamilton City Council proposed to redevelop as a civic centre. A new concept To its part of the project, which is designed as an integrated unit (after exhaustive discussions between the two bodies), the Railways Department brought a new concept in commercial building. The rest of Victoria Street, stretching to the east, presents a typical New Zealand street scene of shop fronts, many of them leading into narrow oblong interiors, with inefficiently used land in the middle of the block. But the Railways block is designed to present a pleasant, part-open, part-covered plaza frontage to the street to “suck” people into a multistorey shopping area. One shop-owner already established in the area has found greatly increased custom, since the more attractive surrounds have encouraged people to walk through his store as a matter of course. Most of the project has still to be built, largely because of long delays in town planning objections and appeals since its publication in mid--1969. One department store company has already built elsewhere. But success seems assured. Already other stores elsewhere within the severe limits imposed by the rigidity of land usage round them, are emulating some of the ideas incorporated in the project. Plans still vague In contrast with the firm progress on the Hamilton project, plans for use of the Wellington airspace are still vague. In total, the Railways Department has two miles and a half of street frontage along two main routes lead- ' ing north through Thomdon from the central city, Thorndon Quay on one side and the Waterloo Quay-Aotea Quay route on the other. All of the frontage could theoretically be used eventually, but that is a long way off. The initial stage, which could cost up to $2O million to build, envisages the use of about half of the platform space, reaching out from the terminal building. (The Wellington Station is built in a “U” shape, with the tracks running into the bottom of the "U”.)

Railways Department planners are thinking in terms of a series of tower blocks, possibly three, along the sides of the “U,” with a onestorey shopping plaza suspended over the tracks. Car-park building It could involve also a carpark building and possibly, through the car park, vehicle access from Thomdon Quay to Waterloo Quay, a journey which can now involve a two-mile drive once one has gone past the station on Waterloo Quay. The Railways Department is not laying down hard and fast plans. At present it is discussing the project with the Capital Planning Committee—which involves the Wellington City Council, The Regional Planning Authority and the central Government —to establish what would be the best form for the project and to secure agreement with its aims.

That achieved—hopefully early this year—the Railways Department will call in possible developers from Australia and New Zealand to submit detailed proposals and feasibility studies working within a framework it lays down.

The layman’s first reaction Ito the project is one of in-

credulity. At present the station is some two blocks away from Lambton Quay and the main shopping area, separated by a “dead” area of Government office buildings, the telephone exchange and a bus terminal. And who would want tp build over a noisy, smelly railway station anyway? A logical place for a big commercial area seems at first to be the run-down Courtenay Place region, on the south end of the central city. Compelling arguments But the arguments for the project are compelling. Most of the traffic comes from the north—s2,ooo commuters a day pass through the station alone—so why funnel them through the city to Courtenay Place? The city has been regenerating at the northern end over the last 20 years and looks like continuing to push north, eventually’enveloping the station. The redevelopment of the Molesworth Street area as the Government centre office complex will create a demand for shopping facilities in the area. Eventually the bus terminal will be relocated and the ageing Public Trust Building replaced, and this could be done in such a way as to link the station and Lambton Quay better. The Terrace, the main scene of office block development over the last 12 years, is now nearing saturation point. The cost of building over Railway Department airspace has now become competitive with building elsewhere in the central city, and tower blocks on the railway station would be guaranteed an uninterrupted harbour view.

Noise and vibration have been successfully combated overseas by the use of concussion pads under the support columns. In any case, most of the rail traffic at the terminal is electric commuter trains, silent and with little vibration. It is envisaged that the few diesel passenger trains and rail-cars could all use one platform and ventilation would need to be provided only at that one place. Such a scheme does not please those on the regional planning scene who want to see decentralisation into the Hutt Valley and Porirua to reduce commuter car traffic growth, and retailers who see the shopping plaza as a threat to their own expan-

sion may have cause to oppose it.

The Railway Department counters this with confident assertions that the plaza will contain “convenience” shops —chemists, food shops and the like—designed primarily for quick commuter shopping, rather than big-outlay buying, and therefore will not compete with the main shopping area. Each may be right to some extent. The project is bold and imaginative, hardly consistent with the old image of the railways as an inefficient Government department. And it should make money for the Railways Department, which will simply lease the airspace over a long term and leave the developer with the administrative worries. The attraction to longsuffering taxpayers reminiscing on past Railways Department deficits is obvious.

If successful, Wellington will be the first of a number of projects. Already the department is looking closely at the railway yards at Newmarket in Auckland. If the whole of the ground space there is not needed for tracks it will probably design a tower block-plaza development across the yards as part of a wider redevelopment of a congested shopping area.