[EDIT: com­ments were inad­ver­tent­ly dis­abled on this post, but they are now enabled.]

Accord­ing to a sto­ry in the Dom Post today, a Greater Welling­ton region­al coun­cil report up for debate this week sug­gests clos­ing the least-used sta­tions in the region (Muri and Kenepu­ru sta­tions on the Para­pa­rau­mu line).  Coun­cil trans­port and access com­mit­tee chair­man Peter Glen­sor said the coun­cil and KiwiRail would decide ear­ly next year whether to close Muri sta­tion, and would con­sid­er the future of Kenepu­ru.

[Slideshow via hadley­wood’s album of Welling­ton Rail­way Sta­tions]

Appar­ent­ly while pas­sen­gers make about 16,000 trips on the Para­pa­rau­mu line each day, only 26 peo­ple use Muri dur­ing morn­ing peak-trav­el times and 22 use Kenepu­ru.  That’s not a lot, and its easy to under­stand the argu­ment behind ditch­ing them.  How­ev­er, in these times of cli­mate and envi­ron­men­tal con­cerns, it’s hard to get behind the (poten­tial) clo­sures. 

[more after the jump]

Enabling high­er util­i­sa­tion of pub­lic trans­port via improv­ing the com­muter expe­ri­ence would sure­ly demand the cre­ation of MORE sta­tions, not a reduc­tion from cur­rent num­bers.  In addi­tion, con­sid­er the recent slips and track clo­sures, greater “sta­tion node gran­u­lar­i­ty” (for want of a bet­ter term I just made one up) would cer­tain­ly ease the pain to some com­muters in a sim­i­lar occurence.

A fac­tor in the unpop­u­lar­i­ty of Muri and Kenepu­ru sta­tions could be that both suf­fer some­what from a lack of adja­cent “park’n’ride” car park­ing facil­i­ties.  Does­n’t it then make more future-proof­ing sense to move these sta­tions some­where more suit­able?

The next years will prob­a­bly bring greater demand on our sub­ur­ban com­muter rail net­work, and with it demand for more sta­tions, and more acces­si­ble ones at that.  Instead of embrac­ing a pro­gres­sive approach, our back­wards-look­ing Region­al Coun­cil is look­ing to do the oppo­site.  The infer­ence is clear: “use ’em or lose ’em”.  It’s tempt­ing to assume (hope?) that this report is a one-off, but who knows.  What next?  Bye-bye Red­wood?  Too­tle-oo Tai­ta and Tren­tham?  Au rev­ior Ava and Awarua Street?  Let’s hope not.