Waitematā railway station

# Waitematā railway station

## Abstract

Waitematā railway station, formerly known as Britomart Transport Centre, is the public transport hub in the central business district of Auckland and the northern terminus of the North Island Main Trunk railway line. It combines a railway station in a former Edwardian post office, extended with expansive modernist architectural elements, with a bus interchange. It is at the foot of Queen Street, the main commercial thoroughfare of the CBD, with the main ferry terminal just across Quay Street.

The station was the result of many design iterations, some of them being substantially larger and including an underground bus terminal and a large underground car park. Political concerns and cost implications meant that those concepts did not proceed. At the time of its inception in the early 2000s the station was still Auckland's largest transport project ever, built to move rail access closer to the city's CBD and help boost Auckland's low usage of public transport. It is one of the few underground railway stations in the world designed for use by diesel trains, although their use is now prohibited. Diesel trains from Hamilton and Wellington terminate at The Strand station.

A tunnel to the Western Line is under construction as part of the City Rail Link project. In March 2023, following a joint submission to the New Zealand Geographic Board by Auckland Transport and Auckland Council, the station was officially re-named to Waitematā railway station.

## History

### Earlier uses

The station is on reclaimed land in the middle of what was once Commercial Bay. Its original name came from Point Britomart, a former headland at Commercial Bay's eastern end. In the 1870s and 1880s the headland was levelled and used to fill in Commercial Bay in order to extend the railway line to the bottom of Queen Street.

Auckland Railway Station moved west from its original 1873 site to Britomart in 1885 and remained there after the Post Office was built on the Queen Street frontage in 1912. The Chief Post Office was designed by architect John Campbell in an Edwardian baroque style, using Oamaru stone on a base of Coromandel granite. In 1930 the station was relocated 1.2 km east to Beach Road and the former station site became a bus terminal in 1937 and a car park in 1958.

Many proposals were made to locate the station back in the CBD, most notably in 1973 and 1987, with the 1970s proposal of the Mayor of Auckland, Dove-Myer Robinson, envisaging an underground station at Britomart and a tunnel loop, but that was stopped by the Muldoon National Government, which claimed it was unjustified and too costly. In 1995, Auckland City Council purchased the old Post Office building (PostBank offices closed in 1988, though some postal services remained open beyond that year) and proposed to redevelop the area as a transit centre.

Early designs called for both the bus terminal and the railway to be underground, but these plans were scrapped as consultation showed that buses were preferred above ground by both users and operators, and projected costs soared, partly due to the difficulties with potential water ingress. The developer eventually defaulted on contractual deadlines, and the project failed.

In 1998, a cheaper option was decided on, partly after a consultation process with stakeholders and citizens. The architectural design was chosen via a competition. It used part of Queen Elizabeth II Square and surrounding streets as a bus interchange, with the existing dilapidated bus terminal redeveloped to incorporate both bus services and a pedestrianised area, also known as a Transit Oriented Development (TOD). When nearby Quay Street was realigned in the late 1990s, a tunnel was built (completed in 2000) to provide the underground railway link. Bus services using the old bus terminal were diverted to other locations in June 2001.

The project name, with the station intended to facilitate transfers between buses, trains, ferries and potential future light rail, was officially coined the Waitemata Waterfront Interchange. The station itself later opened as Britomart Transport Centre.

### Construction

Designed by California architect Mario Madayag in collaboration with local Auckland architects Jasmax, construction of Britomart commenced in October 2001, with structural design having been provided by OPUS. It involved 14 km of piling, some being 40 m long and driven 16 m into the underlying bedrock, mainly to provide good earthquake protection, and to futureproof the area for potential later construction of buildings on top of the station. 200,000 cubic metres were excavated for the station, and 40,000 cubic metres of concrete poured. Approximately 2 kilometres (1.2 mi) of new rail track was built, of which half was in a cut and cover tunnel. The station has a site area of 5.2 ha and includes 236 m² retail area.

The station opened to passengers on 7 July 2003, with the official opening on 25 July 2003 by Sir Edmund Hillary and government ministers. Services to the Beach Road terminus ceased, except for some peak-time commuter services and excursion trains using the former Platform 4 (originally Platform 7), renamed ' The Strand '. The commuter services ceased after a few months.

Cost over-runs and differing tastes made the centre politically controversial, the design often being described as a large hole in the ground, both literally and figuratively. Despite this and a NZ$204 million price tag, it has won numerous design awards and is internationally recognised for its innovative but heritage-sympathetic architecture. The main source of contention was the relatively great expense of this public transport development in the Auckland Region, where for many decades the focus had been on private vehicle ownership and travel.

#### Pedestrian underpasses

Initial plans included underground pedestrian walkways to Queen Elizabeth II Square, the nearby downtown ferry terminal and the main shopping street of Queen St. Due to cost over-runs only the short walkway under Queen Street to the square was built, the other two being dropped in favour of a sizeable rain-proof canopy that ran from the square's above-ground exit northward toward the ferry terminal and southward toward the Queen Street- Customs Street intersection.

The underground walkway was closed to pedestrians from 29 March 2016 in order to facilitate preliminary works for the City Rail Link. In April and May 2016, the canopy was dismantled and removed from the site, and on 28 May 2016 the Downtown Shopping Centre was closed and fenced off for demolition.

### Further works

A major commercial building was built over the eastern approach tunnel in the late 2000s, at the eastern edge of the plaza behind the station.

#### City Rail Link works

On 17 January 2017, the Britomart station building was closed and access between it and platforms was blocked off. A new, temporary Britomart station building was opened at the rear of the building, with new stairways and the retention of elevator and escalator access to the platforms. This building was in use for three years. The former building is refurbished and strengthened in preparation for tunnelling under it for City Rail Link services.

To enable the digging of the trench works required for the CRL, the Downtown Shopping Centre was closed on 28 May 2016 and by 23 November had been demolished. It has been replaced with 'Commercial Bay' named after Commercial Bay which was below the modern day site. Commercial Bay consists of the Commercial Bay (PwC tower) skyscraper and the Commercial Bay Shopping Centre. Auckland Council and proprietors Precinct Properties struck a deal to include tunnels for the City Rail Link directly underneath the premises.

In late 2020, the former Queen Elizabeth II Square adjacent to the Old Post Office building was reopened as Te Komititanga, a new civic square that incorporates whāriki (woven mat) patterns, developed in partnership with Ngāi Tai ki Tāmaki weaver Tessa Harris, who developed the patterns in collaboration with weavers from Te Ākitai Waiohua, Ngāi Tai ki Tamaki, Ngāti Te Ata and Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei.

On 6 April 2021 at 1pm the surface building (also known as the Central Post Office) was reopened. The opening was attended by Phil Goff and members of the public. The surface building was ceremonially opened by a ribbon cutting.

In June 2022, the number of serviceable platforms was reduced to enable the two outermost platforms (1 and 5) to be connected to the tunnels for the CRL and become through platforms. As a result of this, Onehunga line services were shortened to terminate at Newmarket instead of Britomart. Auckland Transport claimed that removing Onehunga line services from Britomart would be the least disruptive option. The Public Transport Users Association criticised the move and alleged that 60% of Onehunga line passengers wanted to travel to Britomart. Former Auckland councillor Mike Lee also criticised the change and claimed that rail staff had told him that the change was unnecessary as only one platform would be closed at a time, which still left four platforms for four lines to be operated out of Britomart. Lee explained that one platform was being used to accommodate a spare AM class EMU (the "hot spare") for service disruptions, he believed that this spare unit could be held further up the line at The Strand Station which would free up a platform for Onehunga line services to continue to operate out of Britomart.

In the future, the number of platforms will be permanently reduced from 5 to 4, with Platform 2 permanently closing. Once the CRL is operational, additional works and upgrades to Waitematā station will widen the remaining 4 platforms to accommodate larger passenger volumes in conjunction with improving station access from the eastern entrance.

## Capacity and rail connections

The station is designed to serve up to 10,500 passengers during the peak hour as a terminus.

The station has five platforms and is constrained by the 9.3 m width of the 426 m long double-track access tunnel. Early forecasts predicted that while double-tracking of the surrounding rail network would improve peak time train congestion, the capacity of the corridor would not be reached until about 2020. Growth in train patronage and increased services resulted in the tunnel being at maximum capacity from 2011, almost 10 years earlier than predicted. Because of the capacity restrictions, a proposed Hamilton-Auckland commuter train service would have gone to The Strand Station some 1.5 km to the east.

### Increased services

In its early days, Britomart was criticised because it was built on a scale and level of grandeur that was well in excess of the capacity and patronage of the rail network. Auckland Regional Council transport committee chairwoman Catherine Harland acknowledged that "Britomart opened ahead of its time", raising public expectations that could not be fulfilled at the time due to the state of the rail network.

Patronage on Auckland's rail network increased from 2.5 million journeys in 2003 to just over 14.2 million in July 2015, and by April 2017 had reached 19 million journeys.

### Electrification

It was announced on 17 May 2007 that electrification of Auckland's rail network would proceed. Installation of overhead wires began later, with Auckland Transport (initially ARTA) purchasing new electric units to replace the diesel trains. The project was expected to be completed in 2013.

Britomart was officially electrified on 31 March 2014, with New Zealand's Prime Minister, John Key, flipping the switch in a commemorative ceremony. The first electric passenger services began running four weeks later, between Britomart and Onehunga on the Onehunga Line on 28 April 2014.

From July 2015, all suburban trains serving Britomart were operated by AM Class EMUs, leaving the thrice-weekly Northern Explorer as the only diesel service using the station. By December 2015, the station required a $600,000 upgrade to its diesel extraction fans and Auckland Transport requested that KiwiRail, the operator of the Northern Explorer, fund the upgrade if they wished to continue serving the station. KiwiRail decided that the cost was not justifiable and from 21 December 2015 they ceased serving Britomart and relocated their Auckland terminus to The Strand Station, in the east of the CBD.

### City Rail Link

Plans for a tunnel southward underneath the CBD to Mt Eden and even to Morningside were debated for nearly a century. With Britomart in operation since 2003, the tunnel would allow trains to run through the station rather than having to reverse out over the same set of tracks.

On 5 March 2008, ARTA said that it had begun preliminary planning for a 3.5 km tunnel which would most likely be travelling under Albert Street and serving three underground stations: one near Wellesley Street (linking to Aotea Square), one in the Karangahape Road / Pitt Street area, and one near Upper Symonds Street in Newton. At the southern end, the line would link to a redeveloped station at Mt Eden.

Original estimates for the cost of the CRL were at around $1 billion, taking 5–7 years to plan and build. In August 2014 it was announced that the station at Newton had been dropped in favour of an upgraded station at Mt Eden. In 2015, enabling works for CRL construction began. Main works began in 2018.

Following completion of the CRL, some trains will no longer terminate at Britomart. Platforms 5 and 1 will be the through platforms, while platforms 2–4 will remain terminating platforms.

### Eastern tunnel capacity

A proposed alternative to the City Rail Link (CRL) to increase capacity was the duplication of the existing eastern Britomart approach tunnel. This would have required a new twin track tunnel approximately 500 metres long to be constructed parallel to the existing twin-track tunnel, resulting in four tracks from Quay Park Junction and retaining Britomart as a terminus. Estimated costs were $150 million to $200 million, with 4–5 years to plan and build. Such a project would have allowed the same capacity increase as the CRL at approximately one sixth to one fifth the cost, but without any of the additional benefits that the two new CRL underground stations or the more direct route to the Western Line will provide.

Initially seen as an inferior, but cheaper and more politically acceptable alternative to the CRL tunnel, the duplicate eastern approach also gained favour as a stop gap implementation due to the comparatively short build time. Even if planning had commenced immediately, the CRL might not have become operational until several years after the maximum capacity of the existing corridor was reached. Moreover, while seen as an alternative to the CRL through connection tunnel, the duplicate eastern tunnel would not have precluded it from being built.

A feature that came into operation in 2011 in time for the 2011 Rugby World Cup and allowed an increase in capacity of the existing tunnel is 'bi-directional signalling', which allows a train to leave on the same track on which it entered – freeing it from having to cross over other tracks which may not be safely clear of other trains. In 2019, funding was agreed to restore a five-year commuter train trial between Papakura and Hamilton, with a one-seat journey to Britomart being the eventual aim.

## Services

### Trains

Auckland One Rail operates the Auckland suburban rail network on behalf of Auckland Transport. This includes the electrified lines west to Swanson and south to Manukau and Papakura.

In July 2015, it was reported that the number of trains able to enter and leave Britomart was 20 per hour. On a typical weekday inter-peak, nine trains leave Britomart per hour, comprising:

- 3 trains per hour to Manukau via Glen Innes and Ōtāhuhu (Eastern Line)

- 3 trains per hour to Papakura via Newmarket and Ōtāhuhu (Southern Line)

- 3 trains per hour to Swanson via Newmarket, New Lynn and Henderson (Western Line)

### Buses and ferries

Britomart is a major interchange between trains, buses and ferries. It is the terminus for many bus routes, including the Northern Express NX1 route along the Northern Busway to and from Albany and the Hibiscus Coast. The frequent CityLink bus service passes nearby on Queen and Customs Streets and the InnerLink bus services stop at Britomart.

Other buses depart from stops on surrounding streets, some of which are up to a block away from the station. Until early 2016, buses arrived at and departed from Queen Street in front of the station building, but that portion of Queen Street is now permanently closed to vehicular traffic and is now a public plaza after an initial temporary closure for CRL tunneling works.

Across Quay Street from the station is the Auckland Ferry Terminal, which is the main hub for Auckland's ferry system. There are ferry services to suburbs including Devonport, Birkenhead and Half Moon Bay, as well as to islands in the Hauraki Gulf such as Waiheke Island and Rangitoto Island.

## Heritage registration

The Chief Post Office was registered as a Category I heritage building by Heritage New Zealand on 11 July 1986, with registration number 101.

## Awards

Awards that the station has received:

- 2004 Property Council of New Zealand – Merit Award, Special Purposes Category

- 2004 American Institute of Architecture – Architectural Record / Business Week International Winner

- 2004 New Zealand Institute of Architects – Resene Award, Community and Cultural

- 2004 New Zealand Institute of Architects – Resene Award, Heritage and Conservation

- 2004 Illuminating Engineering Society of Australia and New Zealand – Lighting Award

- 2004 New Zealand Concrete Society – Concrete Award

- 2005 New Zealand Institute of Architects – Resene New Zealand Award for Architecture, Community & Cultural

- 2007 Kenneth F. Brown Asia Pacific Culture and Architecture Design Award – Honorable mention


Jon Lovett

# Jon Lovett

## Abstract

Jonathan Ira Lovett (born August 17, 1982) is an American podcaster, comedian, and former speechwriter. Lovett is a co-founder of Crooked Media, along with fellow former White House staffers during the Obama administration Jon Favreau and Tommy Vietor. Lovett is a regular host of the Crooked Media podcasts Pod Save America and Lovett or Leave It. As a speechwriter, he worked for both President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton when she was a United States senator and a 2008 presidential candidate. Lovett also co-created the NBC sitcom 1600 Penn, and was a writer and producer on the third season of HBO 's The Newsroom.

## Early life and education

Lovett was born in Woodbury, Long Island to a Reform Jewish family of Ukrainian ancestry that operated a box factory started by his grandfather. He attended Syosset High School.

Lovett graduated from Williams College in 2004 with a degree in mathematics. His senior thesis, Rotating Linkages in a Normed Plane, led to a related publication on the same topic in American Mathematical Monthly. Lovett was the Williams College class speaker at his commencement ceremony in 2004.

After graduation, Lovett spent a year working as a paralegal and doing stand-up comedy on the side.

## Political speechwriter

In 2004, Lovett volunteered for John Kerry's presidential campaign. He was asked to write a statement for the candidate, and his work led to an offer of a writing internship. He briefly worked in Jon Corzine's Senate office. He was hired in 2005 to assist Sarah Hurwitz as a speechwriter for then-Senator Hillary Clinton, and he continued to write speeches for her through her 2008 presidential campaign.

When Clinton lost the 2008 Democratic primary contest, Lovett won an anonymous contest to write speeches for President Barack Obama in the White House. Lovett wrote speeches in the Obama administration for three years, working closely with Jon Favreau and David Axelrod. Prominent speeches that he wrote include policy speeches on financial reform and don't ask, don't tell, as well as remarks at the White House Correspondents' Dinner.

Lovett secretly officiated the first same-sex marriage in the White House, before the Obama administration supported same-sex marriage.

## Media career

### Television

In 2011, before Barack Obama ran for reelection, Lovett left the White House and moved to California to become a screenwriter, citing a desire to write independently and focus on creative comedy full-time. Lovett collaborated with Josh Gad and Jason Winer on the television series 1600 Penn, of which Lovett was a co-creator, executive producer, and writer from 2012 until its cancellation in 2013. Lovett then worked as a writer, producer, and advisor on season three of HBO 's The Newsroom. From 2012 to 2015, Lovett also contributed opinion pieces to venues like The Atlantic. As of 22 May 2024, Lovett has been confirmed to be a contestant on the 47th season of the CBS reality television show Survivor.

### Crooked Media

Starting in March 2016, Lovett co-hosted The Ringer 's political podcast Keepin' it 1600 with former fellow Obama staffers Jon Favreau, Dan Pfeiffer, and Tommy Vietor. The podcast was intended to cover the 2016 presidential race, and not expected to continue after that. But after the November 2016 election, Lovett, Favreau and Vietor wished to become engaged in politics again without having to leave Los Angeles or return to political campaigning. So they founded a liberal media company, Crooked Media, with the flagship podcast Pod Save America. Crooked Media, and Pod Save America in particular, has been compared to previous left-wing efforts like Air America to match America's conservative talk radio, and Lovett has been characterized as providing comic relief to the programming. The company has since launched a range of podcasts, several of which regularly feature Lovett.

In March 2017, Lovett began hosting Lovett or Leave It, a panel show podcast produced by Crooked Media. The podcast, typically recorded in front of a live audience in Los Angeles, with Lovett and Crooked Media, embarked on national and international tours featuring live versions of both Pod Save America and Lovett or Leave It. Lovett was also involved in launching Crooked Media's voter recruitment and education project, Vote Save America.

## Personal life

Lovett is gay. He and investigative journalist and author Ronan Farrow became romantically involved in 2011. In October 2019, Farrow published Catch and Kill, where he publicly announced their engagement after proposing to Lovett in an earlier draft of his book. However, in a March 2023 episode of his podcast, Lovett or Leave It, Lovett stated that he was single after the end of a "10 and a half year" relationship.


Reinhart Ceulemans

# Reinhart Ceulemans

## Abstract

Reinhart Jan Maria Ceulemans (born 15 January 1954 in Antwerp, Belgium) is an emeritus professor of Ecology and previous director of the Research Center of Excellence PLECO of the University of Antwerp. He has been vice-dean of the Faculty of Sciences at the University of Antwerp, and was a visiting professor at the University of Washington, Seattle, at the Université Paris-Sud, Orsay (France, 1989) and at the University of Ghent (Belgium, 2013–2019). He officially retired in October 2019 and is now a visiting professor at the University of Antwerp (Belgium), a researcher at CzechGlobe Academy of Sciences in Brno (Czech Republic) and an international consultant to the Slovenian Forestry Institute (Ljubljana, Slovenia).

## Issues of study

His research focused primarily on ecophysiological responses of trees to increasing CO concentrations as well as on the use of poplar and willow plantations for bioenergy, which increased the understanding of the importance of natural ecosystems in managing the global environmental crises.

### Renewable (bio-)energy production from poplar

Based on the improved knowledge of the biological aspects of productivity in poplar, he expanded his research after 1990 toward the production of bioenergy from poplar. He investigated the entire production chain, from the establishment of the biomass plantation to the final production of renewable energy. The focus was on the cultivation of poplar in intensively managed, high-density short rotation coppice (SRC). He brought the concept of producing bioenergy from SRC with fast-growing poplar trees to fruition and identified the principal yield determinants of poplar for bioenergy... In 2009, Ceulemans obtained an Advanced Grant of the European Research Council, POPFULL, to conduct a full system analysis of a bioenergy plantation. For the first time a full balance of all greenhouse gases (CO and the non-CO greenhouse gases as CH and N O) as well as a full life cycle assessment were made during several rotations of an operational (20 ha) SRC plantation of poplars and willows. These research efforts proved the high potential of bioenergy from the plantation farm to the conversion plant, i.e. a climate change mitigation strategy and also became an ERC success story

### Impact of global changes on plants and ecosystems

From 1990 onward Ceulemans extended his research to the response of poplar and other plants to global environmental changes. He quantified, measured and modeled the responses to the effects of elevated CO and climate warming using different techniques such as growth chambers, open-top chambers, Free-air concentration enrichment (FACE) within the framework of the European funded research programs POPFACE and EUROFACE. This work showed that plants profit from a rising atmospheric CO concentration with a mean biomass stimulation of 30%, but also indicated that acclimation counteracts and mitigates most of this stimulation

### Biosphere – atmosphere fluxes

Since 1996, his research group got actively involved in the quantification of fluxes between the ecosystems and the atmosphere for a better understanding of ecosystem responses to global changes. He was an active participant in various European flux programs, incl. CARBO-EUROPE IP. From 2013 to 2019 Ceulemans was the Belgian Focal Point of the Integrated Carbon Observation System research infrastructure and coordinated the Belgian network of observation stations.

## Leadership and director of Research Center of Excellence

From 2000 to 2019 Ceulemans led the Research Group of Plant and Vegetation Ecology (PLECO, Department of Biology, University of Antwerp). In 2007 the research group was recognized as a Research Center of Excellence at the University of Antwerp. As the director of the Research Center, he also became the Methusalem titular with long-term funding from the Flemish Government through the University of Antwerp (2007-2019). He was chairman of the Department of Biology (2004-2006), vice dean of the Faculty of Sciences (2006-2009) and chair of various international evaluation and selection committees, including the European Science Foundation (ESF). Under his supervision a total of 28 PhD's were defended.

## Awards and honors

- In 1990, he received the Scientific Achievement Award of the International Union of Forest Research Organizations (IUFRO).

- During the academic year 2006-2007 he was titular of the Belgian Francqui Chair at the Université Catholique de Louvain (UCL). As a Francqui Chair he taught various courses and classes on forest ecophysiology, the ecology and genetics of poplar, plant ecology and related.

- He was elected a member of the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts (since 2009)

- On 27 April 2010, he received the academic title of Doctor Honoris Causa at Mendel University of Brno (Czech Republic) from the Faculty of Forestry and Wood Sciences. Two years later – on 15 March 2012 – he became Doctor Honoris Causa at the Université d’Orléans, France.

- In 2015, he was elected a corresponding member of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts (since 2015)

## Publications and output

By 2019, Ceulemans was the lead author or co-author of over 345 publications in peer-reviewed scientific journals, as well as the (co-)editor of nine books on plant responses to environmental factors and tree physiology. He also co-authored over 50 publications in scientific volumes, proceedings and popularizing journals. His publications have been cited over 30 000 times and he has an H-index of 83 on Google Scholar. He served as associate editor for four international, peer-reviewed journals, i.e. Tree Physiology; Annals of Forest Science; Forest Ecology and Management; Plant, Cell and Environment.