Passenger rail is definitely feasible; not necessarily everywhere but in lots of places. It comes down to frequency, average speed and the cost of alternatives and whether their emissions are accounted for or not.
There’s challenges around electrification that would make it cleaner; but its possible that even a DE unit might be better than the equivalent number of busses. And I would hazard a guess that it would be orders of magnitude better than even our smaller turboprops.
The challenge is average speed and thus time to destination plus ticket price. But its not an insurmountable challenge.
Some routes if the train can get fast enough aren’t going to be all that much slower than a plane too (at certain times of day). Eg, someone travelling from Waipawa to Wellington CBD by plane has to drive to Napier (40 minutes), fly to Wellington (50 minutes) taxi to CBD (30 minutes at busy times). But a high(er) speed train from Napier to Wellington cuts out that 60-70 minutes at either end, because it could stop in Waipawa and drops you off basically in the CBD.
Similar deal for travel into Auckland CBD. Air travel kinda has an illusion of convenience about it - but even someone going say from Hastings - Wellington by air will spend about the same time in cars than flying :) A train journey combines all those emissions into one vehicle!
If the train journey could be sped up to only taking 150-180 minutes then its pretty close to the air travel alternative - and way better than a bus.
3h 15 minutes by road, 260km. Why not run a bus on the road we already have? That’s a lot of money to spend to be on par with something we already have.
I dunno what train times would look like, but as an example a trip from Wellington to New Plymouth is a bit over 4.5 hours (Google Maps), but an Intercity bus is 9.5 hours. That’s over double the time (partly because there’s a bit of a wait in the middle, no direct options). I only use this example because I’m familiar with is.
Wellington to Auckland is a little better, with the bus being about 11.5 hours compared to 8 hours of driving, if you get a direct bus.
I’m not really sure what amount of extra time I’m willing to accept to not have to drive. But a bus has to stop lots to pick up and drop off people, and is limited to 90kph max speed. A train can make up for the stops by going faster (rail allowing), and generally doesn’t have to slow down for towns that it isn’t stopping in, or for traffic or intersections. If you can also get the train to go faster than normal (e.g. higher speed rail) then you could probably make the trip comparable to a car.
Some significant downsides are that rail is expensive to run (pay drivers more, need cabin staff, pay kiwirail for use of rail, have to buy the train which costs more than busses). You can say a train can carry more people than a bus, but that’s only helpful if you have the volume of people that makes it true. You typically end up with less services than busses, so there will be less times to suit people so you may also get less people that way. Rail also can only stop where there is a suitable railway station (more money needed), where as you can set your bus routes up to go where people want to be picked up, with many stops not costing more than the cost of a bus stop sign. Many places in the country only have one rail so you now have to plan your routes around other trains (including freight) that busses don’t have to think about.
I would be very keen for passenger rail, but I can’t claim I’m gonna use it enough to cover the costs of running it.
I do wonder if there would be potential in high-speeding existing commuter trains. The one that comes to mind is Hamilton-Auckland. If we can half the time you’d probably more than double patronage, and that would be a lot shorter distance (and so more feasible) than many other other ones talked about in this post.
I’d quite like to take a train trip from, say, Auckland to Wellington, or down the south island, but mostly as a tourist thing, and I’d probably fly the other leg.
I don’t mind driving, and it’s hard to beat the convenience of just getting in the car and going whenever you feel like it.
I’d quite like to take a train trip from, say, Auckland to Wellington, or down the south island, but mostly as a tourist thing, and I’d probably fly the other leg.
You can do Auckland to Wellington or vice versa, though it’s about $240 a person so it’s cheaper to fly. There’s also a couple out of Christchurch, one to Picton. And the other is Christchurch to Greymouth.
If you’re really keen, you could do Auckland to Wellington, catch the ferry as a walk-on passenger then get the train from Picton to Christchurch, then Christchurch to Greymouth.
I don’t mind driving
Long distance driving is an altogether different experience when you have three young kids 😆. It’s getting a bit easier now they are all forward facing. The youngest, previously rear facing in the middle, used to boot the other two in the face when they got bored.
it’s hard to beat the convenience of just getting in the car and going whenever you feel like it.
For sure. Most passenger rail in NZ is commuter, because everyone is heading to the same places and not just going where they feel like it. One issue is the public transport at the end of the trip needs to also be decent. But even if intercity trains were available and at convenient times, I don’t see trains replacing every trip for me. Depending on why we are travelling, there’s a good chance we’ll need a car (though I’ve occasionally flown to visit family, and there’s normally a spare car around to borrow anyway).
I think one issue with higher speed rail is the need to separate from roads, which can make it cost an awful lot more.
We have commuter rail from Palmy to Wellington and from Masterton to Wellington, and from Hamilton to Auckland. There’s also a train Auckland to Wellington and back but it’s sold as Scenic. But the thing plaguing them all is how long they take, and how much they cost.
A Wellington to Auckland train costs almost $240 per person one way, where if you are flexible with date and time you can get a $150 flight that’s also a lot quicker (though admittedly you are left far from the CBD when your plane lands).
There must be an opportunity to improve that rail trip in terms of price and speed.
Yeah level crossings would definitely have to be removed entirely for high speed rail to work and there’s towns where that can be quite a challenge. eg: Dannevirke has 6 level crossings or Hastings which has 10, though it’d be sick to see passenger rail pulling up to the station right in the middle of town again.
Its maddening that the Auckland-Wellington route is so expensive, but its because they turned it into a tourist trip rather than a transit service. Back in the day (not even that long ago really) it used to run between the two cities twice daily with both The Overlander during the day and The Northerner overnight. But it went to day service only in 2004 and then by 2012 the Overlander had become the tourist version. And in the early 2000s the Bay Express was still running too, as a student you could get half price tickets so it was a great way to get home from Uni in the holidays. But as with the Overlander/Northerner it was slow - 5 1/2 hours to get all the way to Napier. Busses took about the same time but were cheaper (on the full fares).
Anywho, while i’d love proper high speed services between regions I think there’s other things that could be done now that would be good. Eg, the Capital Connection only runs once a day, it’d be grand if there was a shorter service that ran during the day as well so it was a more flexible route. Up in Hawkes Bay a railcar service or just a small DE unit and trailer connecting to the airport from at least as far south as Waipukurau would be good if it ran often enough to provide a viable and flexible commute / flight connection.
Eg, the Capital Connection only runs once a day, it’d be grand if there was a shorter service that ran during the day as well so it was a more flexible route
I think the problem is that the cost of running the full train and the cost of running a half-length train are not that different. You still need one driver, the train is only used for that route so it’s not like you’ll use it elsewhere during the day, you still need at least one person to take tickets. The full train probably only has two?
Plus they talk about cancelling it every few years because they already don’t have enough people at peak times.
Probably what we need is a government to take rail seriously. And if they did take it seriously, they wouldn’t add services that people complained they needed, they would do a proper assessment on where to invest money for the best bang for buck and then actually invest that money. Actually look at the cost/benefit ratio of rail hubs for freight, faster trains (even just 110kph), and get data on the number of cars off the road that would bring.
Yeah I definitely wouldn’t want to run the whole Capital Connection as a middle of the day service - just a unit with a couple of carriages would really be all that’s needed. The challenge is that the best units we have are electric, but:
There’s a big gap in the electrification from Palmerston North down to Waikanae
The two electric systems either side aren’t compatible.
So to run it as electric you’d need to extend the Wellington system up - which would be a poor investment as its not what all the heavy freight stuff uses. Or extend the main trunk system south which would be expensive for the Wellington commuter fleet converting them.
But Queensland developed a Diesel tilt train that can do the job at speed, only its a bit more like the existing Locomotive + carriages, than just a two carriage powered + trailer style one rocking around Wellington these days.
I always thought it was interesting that we have these two power systems for trains, and Wellington over the last 5-10 years invested huge amounts of money in upgrading the lines and the trains. With some planning we could have had the government step in to help change them over to heavy freight suitable lines and get the Auckland to Wellington route electrified for heavy freight and passenger. Currently we have neither!
Yeah its just a lack of political will and a belief that road is the answer really. Bear in mind I think you have to extend Te Rapa to Auckland and Palmerston North to Wellington as well. For mine I think it would be a great investment.
Even if we didn’t do those extra bits, when the Wellington work was being done they could have converted to heavy freight suitable lines. I guess one issue is you can’t keep running the old trains as the track is upgraded bit by bit, but I think it would have been worth it to do.
I should have a dig to see if I can find it, I have this vague idea in my head that possibly when the new electric units were built a decade or so ago that they might have made provision in them for the different systems - but whether that’s real or a false memory I don’t know.
And provision could just mean can be converted, rather than can work right now.
Was doing some googling on whether the Matangi could do both the Wellington DC & Main Trunk AC, and found there was actually a business case prepared by Waka Kotahi a couple years ago that would have run electric units all the way to Palmerston North; just using batteries after Waikanae. Which is a fairly elegant and flexible solution to the problem.
Passenger rail is definitely feasible; not necessarily everywhere but in lots of places. It comes down to frequency, average speed and the cost of alternatives and whether their emissions are accounted for or not.
There’s challenges around electrification that would make it cleaner; but its possible that even a DE unit might be better than the equivalent number of busses. And I would hazard a guess that it would be orders of magnitude better than even our smaller turboprops.
The challenge is average speed and thus time to destination plus ticket price. But its not an insurmountable challenge.
Some routes if the train can get fast enough aren’t going to be all that much slower than a plane too (at certain times of day). Eg, someone travelling from Waipawa to Wellington CBD by plane has to drive to Napier (40 minutes), fly to Wellington (50 minutes) taxi to CBD (30 minutes at busy times). But a high(er) speed train from Napier to Wellington cuts out that 60-70 minutes at either end, because it could stop in Waipawa and drops you off basically in the CBD.
Similar deal for travel into Auckland CBD. Air travel kinda has an illusion of convenience about it - but even someone going say from Hastings - Wellington by air will spend about the same time in cars than flying :) A train journey combines all those emissions into one vehicle!
If the train journey could be sped up to only taking 150-180 minutes then its pretty close to the air travel alternative - and way better than a bus.
3h 15 minutes by road, 260km. Why not run a bus on the road we already have? That’s a lot of money to spend to be on par with something we already have.
And that’s easily within the range of an EV bus.
I dunno what train times would look like, but as an example a trip from Wellington to New Plymouth is a bit over 4.5 hours (Google Maps), but an Intercity bus is 9.5 hours. That’s over double the time (partly because there’s a bit of a wait in the middle, no direct options). I only use this example because I’m familiar with is.
Wellington to Auckland is a little better, with the bus being about 11.5 hours compared to 8 hours of driving, if you get a direct bus.
I’m not really sure what amount of extra time I’m willing to accept to not have to drive. But a bus has to stop lots to pick up and drop off people, and is limited to 90kph max speed. A train can make up for the stops by going faster (rail allowing), and generally doesn’t have to slow down for towns that it isn’t stopping in, or for traffic or intersections. If you can also get the train to go faster than normal (e.g. higher speed rail) then you could probably make the trip comparable to a car.
Some significant downsides are that rail is expensive to run (pay drivers more, need cabin staff, pay kiwirail for use of rail, have to buy the train which costs more than busses). You can say a train can carry more people than a bus, but that’s only helpful if you have the volume of people that makes it true. You typically end up with less services than busses, so there will be less times to suit people so you may also get less people that way. Rail also can only stop where there is a suitable railway station (more money needed), where as you can set your bus routes up to go where people want to be picked up, with many stops not costing more than the cost of a bus stop sign. Many places in the country only have one rail so you now have to plan your routes around other trains (including freight) that busses don’t have to think about.
I would be very keen for passenger rail, but I can’t claim I’m gonna use it enough to cover the costs of running it.
I do wonder if there would be potential in high-speeding existing commuter trains. The one that comes to mind is Hamilton-Auckland. If we can half the time you’d probably more than double patronage, and that would be a lot shorter distance (and so more feasible) than many other other ones talked about in this post.
I’d quite like to take a train trip from, say, Auckland to Wellington, or down the south island, but mostly as a tourist thing, and I’d probably fly the other leg.
I don’t mind driving, and it’s hard to beat the convenience of just getting in the car and going whenever you feel like it.
You can do Auckland to Wellington or vice versa, though it’s about $240 a person so it’s cheaper to fly. There’s also a couple out of Christchurch, one to Picton. And the other is Christchurch to Greymouth.
If you’re really keen, you could do Auckland to Wellington, catch the ferry as a walk-on passenger then get the train from Picton to Christchurch, then Christchurch to Greymouth.
Long distance driving is an altogether different experience when you have three young kids 😆. It’s getting a bit easier now they are all forward facing. The youngest, previously rear facing in the middle, used to boot the other two in the face when they got bored.
For sure. Most passenger rail in NZ is commuter, because everyone is heading to the same places and not just going where they feel like it. One issue is the public transport at the end of the trip needs to also be decent. But even if intercity trains were available and at convenient times, I don’t see trains replacing every trip for me. Depending on why we are travelling, there’s a good chance we’ll need a car (though I’ve occasionally flown to visit family, and there’s normally a spare car around to borrow anyway).
I think one issue with higher speed rail is the need to separate from roads, which can make it cost an awful lot more.
We have commuter rail from Palmy to Wellington and from Masterton to Wellington, and from Hamilton to Auckland. There’s also a train Auckland to Wellington and back but it’s sold as Scenic. But the thing plaguing them all is how long they take, and how much they cost.
A Wellington to Auckland train costs almost $240 per person one way, where if you are flexible with date and time you can get a $150 flight that’s also a lot quicker (though admittedly you are left far from the CBD when your plane lands).
There must be an opportunity to improve that rail trip in terms of price and speed.
Yeah level crossings would definitely have to be removed entirely for high speed rail to work and there’s towns where that can be quite a challenge. eg: Dannevirke has 6 level crossings or Hastings which has 10, though it’d be sick to see passenger rail pulling up to the station right in the middle of town again.
Its maddening that the Auckland-Wellington route is so expensive, but its because they turned it into a tourist trip rather than a transit service. Back in the day (not even that long ago really) it used to run between the two cities twice daily with both The Overlander during the day and The Northerner overnight. But it went to day service only in 2004 and then by 2012 the Overlander had become the tourist version. And in the early 2000s the Bay Express was still running too, as a student you could get half price tickets so it was a great way to get home from Uni in the holidays. But as with the Overlander/Northerner it was slow - 5 1/2 hours to get all the way to Napier. Busses took about the same time but were cheaper (on the full fares).
Anywho, while i’d love proper high speed services between regions I think there’s other things that could be done now that would be good. Eg, the Capital Connection only runs once a day, it’d be grand if there was a shorter service that ran during the day as well so it was a more flexible route. Up in Hawkes Bay a railcar service or just a small DE unit and trailer connecting to the airport from at least as far south as Waipukurau would be good if it ran often enough to provide a viable and flexible commute / flight connection.
I think the problem is that the cost of running the full train and the cost of running a half-length train are not that different. You still need one driver, the train is only used for that route so it’s not like you’ll use it elsewhere during the day, you still need at least one person to take tickets. The full train probably only has two?
Plus they talk about cancelling it every few years because they already don’t have enough people at peak times.
Probably what we need is a government to take rail seriously. And if they did take it seriously, they wouldn’t add services that people complained they needed, they would do a proper assessment on where to invest money for the best bang for buck and then actually invest that money. Actually look at the cost/benefit ratio of rail hubs for freight, faster trains (even just 110kph), and get data on the number of cars off the road that would bring.
Yeah I definitely wouldn’t want to run the whole Capital Connection as a middle of the day service - just a unit with a couple of carriages would really be all that’s needed. The challenge is that the best units we have are electric, but:
So to run it as electric you’d need to extend the Wellington system up - which would be a poor investment as its not what all the heavy freight stuff uses. Or extend the main trunk system south which would be expensive for the Wellington commuter fleet converting them.
But Queensland developed a Diesel tilt train that can do the job at speed, only its a bit more like the existing Locomotive + carriages, than just a two carriage powered + trailer style one rocking around Wellington these days.
I always thought it was interesting that we have these two power systems for trains, and Wellington over the last 5-10 years invested huge amounts of money in upgrading the lines and the trains. With some planning we could have had the government step in to help change them over to heavy freight suitable lines and get the Auckland to Wellington route electrified for heavy freight and passenger. Currently we have neither!
Yeah its just a lack of political will and a belief that road is the answer really. Bear in mind I think you have to extend Te Rapa to Auckland and Palmerston North to Wellington as well. For mine I think it would be a great investment.
Even if we didn’t do those extra bits, when the Wellington work was being done they could have converted to heavy freight suitable lines. I guess one issue is you can’t keep running the old trains as the track is upgraded bit by bit, but I think it would have been worth it to do.
I should have a dig to see if I can find it, I have this vague idea in my head that possibly when the new electric units were built a decade or so ago that they might have made provision in them for the different systems - but whether that’s real or a false memory I don’t know.
And provision could just mean can be converted, rather than can work right now.
Was doing some googling on whether the Matangi could do both the Wellington DC & Main Trunk AC, and found there was actually a business case prepared by Waka Kotahi a couple years ago that would have run electric units all the way to Palmerston North; just using batteries after Waikanae. Which is a fairly elegant and flexible solution to the problem.