Spend A Penny Please So We Can Go

Great to see toilets are coming back to railway stations.

These will be Newmarket station's new toilets

Newmarket’s original railway station had toilets but these disappeared when Auckland City allowed another apartment block to be constructed off Broadway in the lane where the toilets were.

Finally when the new station opens, we get toilets back.

I have pleaded before for toilets to be mandatory on suburban railway stations and have pointed out how the unspeakable happens when homeless people sleeping overnight there need to go – horrible for early morning rail passengers turning up on the platform.

The modern self-contained electronic door toilets are satisfactory so long as the appalling West Auckland Westgate shopping centre rule is not adopted. There you have to pay to use the toilets.

But a couple of locked cubicles are not enough for a busy station hub like Newmarket. Presumably these pictured are just the outside ones and there are more in the station but we need toilets like these on all platforms.

Wellington rail users recently revolted when they discovered their flash new trains had no toilet for those using the hour-plus journey between Wellington and popular seaside retirement village of Waikanae where their last minute Earl Grey tea cuppa would come back to haunt the dear old folks travelling on the long train journey.