Porirua railway station

Porirua railway station is an important intermediate station in New Zealand on the Kapiti Line from Wellington and is part of Wellington's Metlink suburban rail network operated by Transdev.

Porirua
Metlink suburban rail
2013 aerial view of Porirua City Centre and Station
LocationStation Road, Porirua, New Zealand
Coordinates41.1376°S 174.8434°E / -41.1376; 174.8434
Owned byKiwiRail (platform and track); Greater Wellington Regional Council (building and subway)
Line(s)North Island Main Trunk
PlatformsIsland Platform
TracksMainline (2)
Construction
Platform levels1
ParkingYes
Bicycle facilitiesYes
History
Opened21 September 1885
Rebuilt1960
Electrified1940
Services
  Metlink  
Preceding station   Metlink   Following station
toward Waikanae
Kapiti Line
toward Wellington

The island platform urban railway station is on a double track section of the North Island Main Trunk which was opened in 1885 as a single main line on the alignment of today's Down (southbound) line. There is subway access to Porirua city centre and bus stops serving the Porirua area.

Services

Porirua is served by electric multiple units owned by Greater Wellington Regional Council and operated on its behalf by Transdev.

Porirua is served by Kapiti Line commuter trains operated by Transdev Wellington under the Metlink brand operating between Wellington and Porirua or Waikanae. Services are operated by electric multiple units of the FT/FP class (Matangi). Two diesel-hauled carriage trains, the Capital Connection and the Northern Explorer, pass through the station but do not stop.

Off-peak trains stop at all stations between Wellington and Waikanae. During peak periods, trains from Wellington that stop at all stations may terminate at Porirua or Plimmerton and return to Wellington while a number of peak services run express between Wellington and Porirua.[1][2]

Travel times by train are twenty-one minutes to Wellington, and thirty-nine minutes to Waikanae.[1]

Trains run every twenty minutes during daytime off-peak hours, more frequently during peak periods, and less frequently at night.[1] Before July 2018, off-peak passenger train services between Wellington and Waikanae stopping at Porirua ran every thirty minutes[3] but were increased to one every twenty minutes from 15 July 2018.

The station is the hub for bus services west to Titahi Bay and east to Porirua East and Ascot Park. Hoy wrote in 1968 that the importance of Porirua [4]

is shown by the activity of arriving and departing trains and the fact that nearly half the weekday services terminate there. A goods shed and lengthy yard is available for local industries. A casual observer will perhaps wonder where the City obtains its importance until he looks at the line of buses both private and N.Z.R. waiting to take passengers on to Porirua East and Titahi Bay. Well over 1,000,000 passengers are brought to the station annually on the Government buses alone. Porirua station is of modern design with a glassed-in ticket office and waiting room at the northern end, while subways link the two bus stands on each side of the track.

In 2010–11 improvements costing over $1 million were made to the station building, platforms etc.[5]

In 2014 it was described as, "the region's second busiest station".[6]

On 10 March 2014, work, expected to take 3 months, started on improvements to the southern part of the commuter parking.[7] Further expansion in 2015 brought the park and ride provision to 480, with 172 to be added in 2017.[8] Car parking is free,[9] whereas fares on connecting local buses were $2 in 2017.[10]

History

The line was built by the Wellington and Manawatu Railway Company (WMR), and the section via Johnsonville through Porirua to Paremata was opened on 24 September 1885. The line was taken over by the government in 1908, and electrified in 1940 after the opening of the Tawa Flat deviation. Electrification allowed the replacement of steam locomotives with ED class electric locomotives, purchased for use on this line and first introduced in 1938, to haul passenger and goods trains. DM/D electric multiple units first ran to Porirua on 5 September 1949 and replaced the majority of locomotive-hauled passenger trains.[11]

The line was double tracked from Tawa to Porirua on 15 December 1957, and the new island-platform Porirua station opened when the Porirua-Paremata doubling and deviations were opened by the Minister of Railways[12] north to Mana on 7 November 1960,[13] which had been authorised by the Finance Act 1958.[14]

Shortly after the release of the film Goodbye Pork Pie in 1981, a car got stuck in the station's pedestrian subway after the driver tried to imitate the Wellington railway station chase scene.[15]

gollark: Sleep is affected by colourless green apion-apion electrostatic interactions between demagentized particles.
gollark: No, just in general.
gollark: Apiocontrahypnoforms.
gollark: I can and I will, actually, as I'm you.
gollark: It's probably more effective to just entirely ignore any relevant possibility of that.

References
  1. metlink "Kapiti Line (Waikanae – Wellington)". Metlink. Retrieved 21 December 2019.
  2. metlink, Paraparaumu Line timetable Archived 11 October 2007 at the Wayback Machine, accessed 30 October 2007.
  3. "Kapiti Line (Waikanae – Wellington) – Metlink". www.metlink.org.nz. Retrieved 21 December 2019.
  4. Hoy, D.G. Rails out of the Capital p. 75 (NZRLS, 1970)
  5. "Improvements to Porirua Railway Station". Tranz Metro. 1 November 2010. Archived from the original on 24 June 2013. Retrieved 25 June 2013.
  6. Dando, Kris (14 January 2014). "More parking planned for railway station". Stuff.co.nz. Retrieved 8 June 2017.
  7. "Disruptions to Porirua Station Park & Ride". Metlink. 7 March 2014. Retrieved 19 April 2014.
  8. "Porirua railway station set to get much-needed car park expansion". Stuff. Retrieved 8 June 2017.
  9. "Park & Ride car parks – Metlink". www.metlink.org.nz. Retrieved 8 June 2017.
  10. "Metlink – Greater Wellington's Public Transport Network". www.metlink.org.nz. Retrieved 8 June 2017.
  11. Murray, Bruce; Parsons, David (2008). Rails through the Valley: The story of the construction and use of the railway lines through Tawa. Wellington: Tawa Historical Society. ISBN 978-0-473-14410-4.
  12. "Changes to the Railway line through Porirua City – Porirua City". www.pcc.govt.nz. Archived from the original on 5 July 2017. Retrieved 8 June 2017.
  13. Hoy, D.G. Rails out of the Capital pp. 23,70 (NZRLS, 1970)
  14. "Finance Act 1958" (PDF).
  15. Matthews, Philip (30 January 2017). "No sleep till Invercargill: can lightning strike twice for Pork Pie?". Stuff.co.nz. Retrieved 4 February 2017.
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