For someone who doesn’t really seem to like rail all that much, Steven Joyce has certainly opened quite a few train stations, rail trenches and the like. This somewhat bizarre situation continued today with the opening of Grafton Station. While Grafton Station is really just a relocation of Boston Road station by about 200m, it has been built as a pretty high quality station from scratch and will offer good connectivity with the domain, hospital, various schools and the Central Connector busway.
Unfortunately I didn’t manage to make the opening itself this afternoon, but Jon C from AucklandTrains has excellent detailed coverage of it. 
It seems like there were a number of speeches made at the opening, as per usual – and Mike Lee ruffled a few feathers with his comments on the Super City, how long Project DART has taken and the need for the CBD Rail Tunnel – all very valid points. I find myself particularly fond of this part of his speech:
I welcome once again the Minister’s decision on electrifying the Auckland rail network and to purchase new electric rolling stock – it’s a decision I am sure he will never regret.
I urge the government not to delay too long in pressing ahead with the CBD loop tunnel – which has been periodically promised and turned down by central governments since 1924.
For ladies and gentlemen there is a tremendous lot to be proud of Auckland about – this wonderful station for a start – but we have our superb harbours, and Hauraki Gulf, our beautiful landscape, our superb beaches, our wonderful civic amenities and parks, our weather, our unique Auckland quality of life.
It is my fervent hope – and the hope of thousands of Auckland public transport users that in the not too distant future we have a world class rapid transit system to be proud of as well.
In the end our whole purpose must be for Auckland and its people.
It’s always amusing when people say that we need to complete the motorway network because it’s been planned for so long. On that basis the CBD Rail Tunnel should be the first project off the block as it’s been planned since the 1920s, before motorways were even invented!
I’m going to try to get to Grafton Station some time on Sunday when it opens to the general public and take some photos.
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Jon has a couple of videos of SJ’s speech. Interestingly he says
“and of course we are spending very large sums of money in this infrastructure, $1.6 billion in fact. $600 million which was signed off by the previous government for the DART projects we’re standing in today, half a billion for the electrification of the network and another half billion dollars that I snuck past my cabinet colleagues on the subject of electric trains”
Earlier he also talked about how it is important to have a these sorts of transport initiatives to allow young people to have the opportunities to live and work in Auckland
Matt, that sounds very interesting. Maybe Joyce is finally getting his head around the wider benefits of good public transport?
Josh – two short videos on the following link http://www.aucklandtrains.co.nz/2010/04/09/steven-joyce-good-transport-keeps-young-kiwis-living-here-videos/
At least he doesn’t appear to have said the “its not about roads or rail” line he so often uses. I was also wondering if he can sneak $500 mil past cabinet then how much could he get past them for a CBD tunnel if he really tried.
It’s easy to wax lyrical about projects already paid for and projects that were election promises but how about showing how this government plans to get PT evolving and one day being a world class system? Because I haven’t seem much of that coming out of Joyce.
I can see a DC in your photo 🙂
Call me overly hopeful, but I’m hoping once Steven Joyce’s name ends up on the opening plaques of a few pieces of quality rail infrastructure, he’ll see more value in a good passenger transit system.
A bit like John Banks and Britomart.
This is an absolutely fantastic station, I am so pleasantly suprised and wouldn’t have cared if Robert Mugabe opened it…
If Robert Mugabe opened, then soon, we’d have to have seventeen tickets each to use the trains there ,-)
Sorry, I’m still not buying John Banks’ “Railroad to Damascus” moment – this sudden burst of pro-PT enthusiasm coincided a bit too closely with the appearance of other possible contenders for the supermayoralty. Happy to be proven wrong one day, though.
Well I’ve made a copy of all the promises he made on the Auckland Trains blog guest post a week or so ago… If he wins we have commitments to hold him to now…
Sam F – It hasn’t been that sudden actually, one of the reasons he made it back in was because his focus moved more towards PT, and he was talking pro PT well before the whole Supercity thing was even on the tables, so I think thats being a bit harsh, I remember listning to him at a roading project he was talking at about putting more emphasis on PT, that was 2 years ago.
I think the change for Banksie came when he lost his mayorality to a cereal manufuacturer after ignoring the shift toward public transport and away from motorway building. He was plugging roads roads roads and lost as a result.
Banks learned a pretty tough lesson in 2004 – that you can’t win a mayoralty race on the back of a “motorways are awesome, let’s build them like crazy” policy platform.
For Auckland it’s fantastic he has learned that lesson. While I don’t necessarily think that he personally believes in public transport all that much, that doesn’t really seem to matter much if he supports it in practice. Unfortunately that’s where Banks falls a bit short, as in his time as mayor all we’ve really seen is the canning/delaying of various PT projects like the Dominion Road bus upgrade, Council messing with Tamaki Drive bus lanes and all their uncertainty about Grafton Bridge’s bus lanes.
That said, Len Brown has hardly set the world on fire either. It was his council that refused to stump up with the necessary extra cash to bring the Manukau Rail Link right into the heart of Manukau’s CBD.
There was a piece from Len Brown in the local paper recently, he was trying to say how much better he is for PT than Banks. His only listed accomplishment was the Manukau link which of course was planned before he was mayor and as you pointed out his council wouldn’t stump up a few mil to put it where it should go. Also with having no link to the south of Manukau much of the potential use of the station will cut out. Hardly a glowing report card for either candidate.