[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.