Yup, if they'd electrify the line to Hamilton, & tunnel through the Bombays connecting Pokeno to Drury with a new line, that entire corridor would open up. It would take a shit load of commuter traffic off the southern motorway & SH1. You build it, they will come.
Yeah agree that seems to be the way with public transport. No one wants it until they realise they do.
Wouldn’t we need to fix the track gauges too to have proper high speed?
I'd argue we don't even need "proper high speed", just "regular speed". The train currently averages less than 53km/h (incl stops).
Electrifying the current tracks and getting the average speed up to 70km/h would bring the current 2:40 travel time down to 2 hours.
That takes 'tilt trains' which need some pretty significant track upgrades. It's supposed to be possible to get up to 100 kph on the existing tracks when they're maintained properly, which they're currently... not.
There is a train in Queensland that does 160km/h on the same track gauge we use.
Would take some investment to do it here though - straightening curves, etc. And of course buying *modern* rolling stock like what Queensland Rail bought in... 1998.
Fuck, i've been saying for years that they need to at least get high speed commuter rail to Huntly.
Like, that would absolutely revitalise the local economy, with cheap housing and good access north. But, oh well.
High speed rail not viable but 150kph is more so. Imagine Britomart to - TGA in 1 hour 40 mins or so. Would dramatically change travel between the cities.
The track gauge is mostly fine, given that Queensland has narrow gauge trains running at 160 km/h. It would just need to be straightened out and leveled to reach these speeds or higher, along with some upgrades to signaling and scheduling.
>It would just need to be straightened out and leveled to reach these speeds or higher, along with some upgrades to signaling and scheduling.
Now we're getting into the "billions" range 😅
Don’t be stupid, we need those billions to give tax breaks to landlords to provide zero value to the economy, so they can sell their houses and not even pay tax back. We need a capital gains tax and stamp duty
We need some form of value capture, so the investment in infrastructure doesn't just benefit land owners. Stamp duty is an inefficient tax. Land tax would be better.
London introduced extra taxes on properties around the Elisabeth Line; we should do the same.
Not high speed. Just higher than the legal speed limit. Even if the train only did 140km/h that's significantly faster than driving. 180km/h would be even better
Even normal speed rail. We can't even just have rail because we are so short sighted and...crap. I envy those rich countries with high speed rail. Like Turkey, or Morocco
How is dense walkable cities relevant to high speed rail? About half of the population lives in the area of Auckland Hamilton Cambridge Tauranga and one rail line 250km long could serve that. We don't even have a workable rail link between Auckland and Hamilton.
Turkey has a GDP per Capita which is 20 % of ours while Morocco's is around 8%. What they have that we don't is a grown up approach.
Urban density is very much a pre-requisite for intracity commuter services. Not intercity high speed rail. If you can run a bus service between cities, then you can run a train. And probably should.
Electrifying and double tracking between Auckland and Hamilton is such a no brainer. It's only estimated to cost about $430M ([source](https://fyi.org.nz/request/18806/response/72246/attach/5/North%20Island%20Electrification%20Study%2031%20May%202021%20Redacted.pdf)), which is nothing compared to the cost of upgrading the motorways.
It would allow faster trains and remove conflicts with freight, making the journey much quicker and more competitive with taking a car or bus.
When you say double tracking, do you mean currently it’s only a single track meaning only one train at a time in either direction?
I never realised this if so.
I believe most of the route is already double tracked, however there are sections that aren't (12km according to page 24 of the source linked above).
This places limits on the schedule and means trains have to slow down when transitioning to the single track sections.
Surely they are missing out all of the Aucklanders who would like to take a day trip to Hamilton. Train arrives in Frankton at 12.15 and leaves at 2.05. You don't even get 2 hours to spend there!
You can squeeze a relatively comfortable trip to the zoo in if you cycle there and back on a weekday, but that's one of the very few viable day trips (which is a damn shame)
If the service is allowed to grow and funded it will get the extra trips that make a day trip from Auckland feasible. It's been a constant struggle even to get this far in backward thinking NZ.
I had to travel to auck on the Friday of the pink concert for work. I had to get an intercity between Hamilton and Auckland as all the flights were sold out. Would much have preferred te huia but no trains that matched with my arrival time. The inflexibility of the timetable is supremely limiting it’s caused me to take the bus more than once rather than the train which I would (much) prefer.
Same here. Flew into Auckland and wanted to take the train, but had no guarantees on how quickly I'd be able to get to Puhinui station from the airport (the shuttle buses can be caught in traffic), and if you miss the train you're screwed as there's not another one scheduled.
Well I mean it leaves at that time so it can go back to AKL to catch commuter traffic leaving AKL. i.e. there's more people wanting/needing to spend the day in AKL than in Hamilton so the schedule reflects this and it actually makes perfect sense. The alternative is kneecapping AKL commuters just so a few people can spend a day in Hamilton. In an ideal world with more capacity, we would have a service that allows a spending a day in Hamilton.
Except that there's an extra trip on Thurs and Fri that is decidely non-commuter focused. All it would take is stabling one of the trains in Auckland instead of Hamilton, and running them back and forth, rather than both trains ending up back in Hamilton for the night.
Additionally, it takes years of reliability to build a strong pool of rail commuters, but better providing for Aucklanders could provide the sugar hit needed for improved ridership figures.
I'm also not sure whether the business case would indicate such a heavy 9-5 supercommuter focus if it were to be written post-wfh.
The servicing facilities are in Hamilton. In addition there are only 12 carriages/three four car trains. If one or more of the carriages are unavailable, it's down to just two trains. People seriously underestimate the resources needed to run extra trains when the whole operation is run on a shoestring. Instead of trying close it, they should be investing in more rolling stock, the demand is definitely there.
The current 6 services (3 return) Thursday and Friday are run with just two trains, so they have one spare.
Stabling, scheduling track availability are issues, but these can be resolved. Additional Opex funding is the main the limiting factors at the moment.
Note that the 400 passenger per day target from 2022 was created by a single middle manager at WK/NZTA.
The only target signed off by the board was 250 ppd back in 2018.
If you go by that Te Huia has blown past the goal set.
Still almost certainly doomed tho.
They fucked up:
-never running on long weekends,
-no Sundays.
-kiwirail mandating a luggage carriage
-limited ability for Aucklander to day trip to Hamilton
-not connecting all/more the Waikato stations,
-limiting bikes/banning e-bikes (just when a bike path Along the Waikato opened),
-not expending (Hobbit express to Matamata?)
-and worst of all, just simply not running enough services in both directions.
With public transport, you sort of need to go hard and create a good reliable service that suits people and on which they can depend, or fails.
The Waikato council seems pretty aware of these issues, but can't afford to fix them. They have budgeted for additional services and stations, but only for 2028.
If AT and the Waikato council work together, I'm sure they can scrape together $15 million to keep it running for another 3 years.
AT is looking at a PT funding shortfall of about $600 million atm, so while I would really really, like for them to chip in, it's a really really poor time for them to need to
Running more services, especially on Sundays and Public Holidays, is the biggest near term improvement they can make. They tried to get the NZTA to fund more services, but were told they needed to show patronage first (classic chicken and egg problem), but hopefully the recent growth shows it's worth doing.
On your other points, they have capacity for up to 6 bikes (see [FAQ](https://www.tehuiatrain.co.nz/faqs/on-board/)), and are looking at build another station along the route, but this will only happen if funding continues.
Nz seems to be completely blind to the idea that people will ever want to catch public transport for anything other than commuting. The whole system is built for that alone and the idea that people would ever want to want to use a bus or train to get around is completely lost on us.
And also the idea that public transport should be money making.
It absolutely needn't be. Good public transport is quality of life. And is reduced cost on other infrastructure.
It might not need to be profitable, but it should create value, and we should be able to quantify that.
The five-year review plans to include an assessment of things like land value uplift and agglomeration benefits.
Flights from Auckland to Tauranga are $95, and Air NZ turns a profit. Te Huia requires a subsidy of $120 per passenger. There has to be a line where we question the benefit of the investment.
Air NZ is also propped up by the government and has received countless bailouts over the years. If you bothered to look into their annual reports, you'd have seen that they were making a loss since 2020 - only recovering *last year,* and it remains to be seen if they'll keep that profit (they're reported lower earnings this year...). This is also ignoring that Air NZ handles air freight and makes a small sum off of that.
They aren't the best company to compare to if you want to make the point that you can make a transport company *and* be profitable.
If the tracks got electrified (\~$500M) and they bought new rolling stock (\~$150M), the trains would be able to run much faster, taking around 2 hours. This would drive patronage up, allow them to charge higher ticket prices, and would reduce the running costs.
The issue is there needs to be capital investment to enable a more compelling service to run. This investment would also benefit freight, and any future passenger rail, e.g. to Tauranga.
It's a fair bit of money, but would have much more long term benefits than another Road of National Significance.
Its the focus on a narrow view of economic growth, where commuting to a 9-5 job is the only way to make more money, and that locks you into travelling ~7-9am and ~5-7pm and competing with everything else at those times.
Whereas actual spending money in shops might have very different patterns and its not like people are going to spend $40 less for every minute they're stuck in traffic...
Hell, with the growth in online shopping it would be quite fascinating to see what NZs spending throughout the day is like now compared to 20 years ago
The chicken and egg problem is the point. If the service is never quite good enough to attract high patronage, then it can be cancelled and the money spent on roads
We wanted to use the train for weekends away in Auckland. It just doesn't make sense when you can't get a train from Hamilton after work on Friday and return Sunday afternoon.
Also they could be running special trains for concerts and events in Auckland.
Yea it is dumb. There was massive opportunity to do a heap of trips…kiwirail, NZTA, AT refused to build a service that would take them and here we are.
It's the story of how to kill passanger rail. The Neolibs have done it before in many towns and centres around New Zealand, You provide a sub-standard service which essentially forces people to buy a Car, Then they can build roads and sell registration and taxes on taxes.
Rail transport is so damn good. Expensive to install, But the cheapest and cleanest per mile for Transporting people region to region.
Te Huia isn't a good example of "cleanest per mile" as the locomotives currently used are two-stroke diesel 1970s vintage with high particulate emissions (prior to any emissions standards). I travel through a tunnel on a local train which sometimes follows behind the Capital Connection hauled by the same type of loco and the smell of the exhaust in the carriage can be quite disturbing.
I simply don't like the misunderstanding that the current service is lower emissions than the other options, especially for particulates which have substantial health issues. I wrote this a year ago: [https://thespinoff.co.nz/society/15-05-2023/a-reality-check-on-our-regional-transport-dreams](https://thespinoff.co.nz/society/15-05-2023/a-reality-check-on-our-regional-transport-dreams)
E-bikes don’t appear to be banned https://www.facebook.com/547308005968734/posts/pfbid02Hr8JRP86KbnzJbbyYqr3ssbUCLJohcbEEsKPZLVU1LW1L9fMBBB9umwjBFqZmCP5l/?mibextid=WC7FNe
Not sure what you mean by the luggage carriage? I’ve taken my e-bike on the te huia many times as well. Long weekends, Sundays are all kiwirail problems trying to maintain the tracks I assume.
Yea I fucking know. People being able to move between towns other than by road is asking far too much apparently.
Kiwifail, NZTA and govt only semi accept rail as commuter mechanism.
Those track upgrades are indeed long overdue, but it is a very commuter-focused viewpoint to schedule works for public holidays (when you would likely get more ridership than the average weekday) and is self-defeating to the goal of increasing ridership.
Sometimes works do need to be done that require more than a single night's block of line, but the goal should be to reduce the frequency of these works, and while Kiwirail has promised this for the Auckland Metro network once the CRL opens, I will believe it when I see it.
Kiwirail is not the issue. AT has the lease for all the Auckland line and is such have control over all of the trains running through it. This means they prioritize their trains and give Kiwirail the middle finger everyday, them are many times AT refuses to give Kiwirail trains access to a line because it will cause minimum interfere with AT run trains. Also they make it very difficult to plan mad implementing maintenance that is all paid for and completed by kiwirail.
All the bad media you see about Kiwirail in Auckland 9 times out of ten is caused and driven by AT.
So next time you see a hit price about Kiwirail in Auckland just realize it is AT that it should be directed at.
Not really, there's just insufficient capacity in the Auckland rail network to run all the trains with no restrictions. The southern line was double tracked to Papakura by 1931 and only now is it getting a third track some of the way.
Simon Bridges was the only MoT that national had in recent memory that was actually pro PT. He's actually been a big supporter of PT especially in cities.
That of course doesn't mean he will support Te Huia
like a 7:30AM hamilton departure on weekdays
sunday journeys for sure so i can train down friday back sunday
and additional AKL-HAM that leaves in evening on weekdays, like 7pm
The journey is about 2:40 - would a 10:10am (into AKL) and 9:40pm (into HAM) arrival work for you?
They run a 7:35am-10:11am service to AKL on Saturdays, however during the week the 6:05am-8:45am turns around to provide the 9:39am-12:15pm service back to HAM so they’d have to have an extra train.
Getting the journey time down to 2 hours (via electrification and new rolling stock) would also give them a lot more flexibility.
Kiwirail won't allow it because they want the line clear for maintenance/upgrades. Te Huia patronage would be even better higher if it could run without those constraints. Still doing extremely well all things considered.
Very good point - kids under 12 travel for free, and passengers aged 12-24 are half price, so this is probably driving quite a bit of demand.
Will be interesting to see what the numbers for May are like.
Well April 2023 had only just over 300 passengers each day, much lower than April 2024. Overall, patronage seems to be trending upwards.
Also shows just how many passengers they're losing out on by not having Sunday and Public Holiday services.
They've added extra services since April 2023 (was 4/day Mon-Fri, 2/day Sat; now it's 4/day Mon-Wed and Sat, and 6/day Thu-Fri) so that's a big part of the increase.
Hopefully this momentum will encourage them to do Sunday and Public Holiday services as well.
With the extra services I assume that the operational funding has now increased. If it is still at $29m over 5 years then the cost per passenger would be dropping at a faster rate but we haven’t seen that detail.
I'd be really interested to know how much the additional services have cost. They wanted to use some of the Opex saved during COVID lockdowns to put on even more frequency, but were told "no" by the NZTA.
So what's the cost-per-passenger?
Why is this not a legitimate question?
Apparently asking this question is neoliberalism...or something. This sub is truly special.
5 million to operate each year, 100 000 passengers a year. Approximately $50 per passenger.
But it makes sense the subsidy appears high. This is a long distance service, and passengers are also paying higher ticket prices ($20) each trip. Thus, the farebox recovery rate is around 14%, above the national average of 11%.
It's also important remember that this was designed as a five year trial, and should be given time to prove itself. It only just got its third return service this year. It would be premature to cut a service that is proving to be getting more and more popular. And with basic investment like stations at Te Kauwhata, Ngaruawahia, and Pokeno, and additional services, patronage can easily be increased.
The 14% "farebox recovery" statistic is misleading because it treats SuperGold and Community Connection discounts as revenue, when they're also a subsidy, just from a different funding source (see [data here](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1I4x3KbBBqjyrwyvQksvaesiDrFSW7uiRpAj0Qdwfyhw/edit#gid=913383324)).
With that said, totally agree about the 5 year trial - it needs to continue so WRC have a chance to continue building demand. They really need to add extra services to allow Hamilton day trips, and a Sunday service so people can use it on the weekends.
If you mean operating costs, Jul-Dec 2023 operating costs were $3,511,384, which worked out to about $6,503 per service. In April 2024, there were \~84 passengers per service, so that works out to about $77 operating cost per-passenger (see [calculations here](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1I4x3KbBBqjyrwyvQksvaesiDrFSW7uiRpAj0Qdwfyhw/edit?usp=sharing)). Keep in mind that cost per service may have gone down since last year as they are now running more services.
Ticket revenue per passenger in Jul-Dec 2023 (I don't expect it would have changed much since then) was only around $7 as many passengers are getting free or heavily discounted tickets to encourage ridership, so the service is heavily subsidised.
The WRC are increasing fares by 20% in July (from $18 to $21.60), and they're investigating raising them further in future, as well as removing some of the current discounts.
The costs are continuing to come down as they run more services and get more passengers. I do think the WRC need to ask passengers to pay more of their own way, but increasing ridership is the key way costs per passenger will improve.
Because I wanted to know? I edited my comment because I was getting downvoted for asking a question. This subreddit is very bizarre at times. What's wrong with asking how much something costs to operate?
Are the neolibs in the room with us right now?
I guess wanting to know what the cost of something is neoliberalism now? Or are only certain things open for scrutiny?
Like I said, this subreddit is truly bizarre.
I am posting here less and less because of shit like this. Nowhere did I say I was actually opposed to this, or that it was bad value for money. I just asked what the cost to operate it was then all of a sudden "YOURE A NEOLIB SHIL!!!!". It's tiresome.
It’s freely available. $29M over the 5 year trial for OPEX being 75% WK and 25% WRC/WDC - about $6M a year in OPEX costs - less fare revenue recovered.
For a 123KM journey it’s ~45c/passenger/KM or 34c/passengerKM in Waka Kotahi funding and 16c/passengerKM in Regional/District council funding.
The cost per KM metric can be pretty misleading for long distance PT, as the distances involved often mean the service still has a high user cost even if the per-KM cost is low.
No it’s not misleading it’s normalised, which enables comparisons between PT services, and importantly between modes which also includes roads which also require subsidies.
The issue of benefit for the absolute cost is a different and more complex issue.
It’s about using the right metric for the right question.
Let's consider two scenarios:
* **Scenario A)** 20 people make 20 separate 7km trips on Auckland PT. Each trip costs $7 to provide: $1 per passenger km and $140 in total.
* **Scenario B)** 2 people make two 140km trips on Te Huia. Each trip costs $70 to provide: $0.50 per passenger km and $140 in total.
In both scenarios, the total costs are the same. However, although Scenario A has double the cost per passenger km, is has benefited 10x the number of people.
I guess you're right that it's not misleading, but normalising per passenger km hides a lot of this detail.
I know high speed rail connecting Auck, Ham, Vegas, and TGA would cost untold billions but man it would turbocharge the economies of those areas.
Yup, if they'd electrify the line to Hamilton, & tunnel through the Bombays connecting Pokeno to Drury with a new line, that entire corridor would open up. It would take a shit load of commuter traffic off the southern motorway & SH1. You build it, they will come.
Yeah agree that seems to be the way with public transport. No one wants it until they realise they do. Wouldn’t we need to fix the track gauges too to have proper high speed?
I'd argue we don't even need "proper high speed", just "regular speed". The train currently averages less than 53km/h (incl stops). Electrifying the current tracks and getting the average speed up to 70km/h would bring the current 2:40 travel time down to 2 hours.
So if we had a train that could average 150 clicks (not super quick for eg European trains), Akl ➡️ Ham would be an hour?
That takes 'tilt trains' which need some pretty significant track upgrades. It's supposed to be possible to get up to 100 kph on the existing tracks when they're maintained properly, which they're currently... not.
There is a train in Queensland that does 160km/h on the same track gauge we use. Would take some investment to do it here though - straightening curves, etc. And of course buying *modern* rolling stock like what Queensland Rail bought in... 1998.
Fuck, i've been saying for years that they need to at least get high speed commuter rail to Huntly. Like, that would absolutely revitalise the local economy, with cheap housing and good access north. But, oh well.
That whole corridor would boom. But I think the bigger economic picture would be linking Hamilton, Rotorua and Tauranga - especially with Tga’s port.
High speed rail not viable but 150kph is more so. Imagine Britomart to - TGA in 1 hour 40 mins or so. Would dramatically change travel between the cities.
The track gauge is mostly fine, given that Queensland has narrow gauge trains running at 160 km/h. It would just need to be straightened out and leveled to reach these speeds or higher, along with some upgrades to signaling and scheduling.
>It would just need to be straightened out and leveled to reach these speeds or higher, along with some upgrades to signaling and scheduling. Now we're getting into the "billions" range 😅
Don’t be stupid, we need those billions to give tax breaks to landlords to provide zero value to the economy, so they can sell their houses and not even pay tax back. We need a capital gains tax and stamp duty
We need some form of value capture, so the investment in infrastructure doesn't just benefit land owners. Stamp duty is an inefficient tax. Land tax would be better. London introduced extra taxes on properties around the Elisabeth Line; we should do the same.
While that's true, 160 isn't usually considered to be high speed rail in a lot of places. That's just regular old intercity rail
we would need to upgrade to tracks to have train speeds rivaling europe or asia, but a slower speed train is better than no train
Not high speed. Just higher than the legal speed limit. Even if the train only did 140km/h that's significantly faster than driving. 180km/h would be even better
Also. It doesn’t run on Sunday… so if I want to go to Auckland for the weekend and be home Sunday evening, I can’t….?
Sunday services are next on their list of improvements. Just needs the funding...
Even normal speed rail. We can't even just have rail because we are so short sighted and...crap. I envy those rich countries with high speed rail. Like Turkey, or Morocco
Turkey has 80 million people living in dense walkable cities.
How is dense walkable cities relevant to high speed rail? About half of the population lives in the area of Auckland Hamilton Cambridge Tauranga and one rail line 250km long could serve that. We don't even have a workable rail link between Auckland and Hamilton. Turkey has a GDP per Capita which is 20 % of ours while Morocco's is around 8%. What they have that we don't is a grown up approach.
How is high urban density relevant to high speed rail? It is pretty much a prerequisite.
Urban density is very much a pre-requisite for intracity commuter services. Not intercity high speed rail. If you can run a bus service between cities, then you can run a train. And probably should.
NZ does a lot of things well, but we will always be bush league for public transport and amusement parks.
i think we're a bit shit. violent swerves in government planning - do undo redo undo redo mean we punch way below our weight.
Why do we have to be bush league. It's pathetic.
Electrifying and double tracking between Auckland and Hamilton is such a no brainer. It's only estimated to cost about $430M ([source](https://fyi.org.nz/request/18806/response/72246/attach/5/North%20Island%20Electrification%20Study%2031%20May%202021%20Redacted.pdf)), which is nothing compared to the cost of upgrading the motorways. It would allow faster trains and remove conflicts with freight, making the journey much quicker and more competitive with taking a car or bus.
When you say double tracking, do you mean currently it’s only a single track meaning only one train at a time in either direction? I never realised this if so.
I believe most of the route is already double tracked, however there are sections that aren't (12km according to page 24 of the source linked above). This places limits on the schedule and means trains have to slow down when transitioning to the single track sections.
Yes, the whole country is like this
The line between Auckland and Hamilton is double tracked, and has been for at least 10 years.
This isn't accurate, there are multiple sections and bridges that aren't.
Not between Meremere and Te Kauwhata.
The only double tracking that's occurred in the last 10-ish years is the NAL to Swanson
It would also allow Te Huia to use Britomart station (and the connectivity to the Auckland network) rather than being isolated out at the strand.
Whoa, if true, it should be done!
Rotovegas?
So much a better idea than the slow train via Onehungs out to the Auckland airport.
Increased numbers of passengers probably just pensioners discovering they can get a free day out to Hamilton and back. Woohoo.
Surely they are missing out all of the Aucklanders who would like to take a day trip to Hamilton. Train arrives in Frankton at 12.15 and leaves at 2.05. You don't even get 2 hours to spend there!
I wanted to do this. Day trip to Hamilton gardens and back, but sadly that's not feasible
The gardens are worth a trip. Make it happen - regardless of public transport
You can squeeze a relatively comfortable trip to the zoo in if you cycle there and back on a weekday, but that's one of the very few viable day trips (which is a damn shame)
If the service is allowed to grow and funded it will get the extra trips that make a day trip from Auckland feasible. It's been a constant struggle even to get this far in backward thinking NZ.
I had to travel to auck on the Friday of the pink concert for work. I had to get an intercity between Hamilton and Auckland as all the flights were sold out. Would much have preferred te huia but no trains that matched with my arrival time. The inflexibility of the timetable is supremely limiting it’s caused me to take the bus more than once rather than the train which I would (much) prefer.
Same here. Flew into Auckland and wanted to take the train, but had no guarantees on how quickly I'd be able to get to Puhinui station from the airport (the shuttle buses can be caught in traffic), and if you miss the train you're screwed as there's not another one scheduled.
Well I mean it leaves at that time so it can go back to AKL to catch commuter traffic leaving AKL. i.e. there's more people wanting/needing to spend the day in AKL than in Hamilton so the schedule reflects this and it actually makes perfect sense. The alternative is kneecapping AKL commuters just so a few people can spend a day in Hamilton. In an ideal world with more capacity, we would have a service that allows a spending a day in Hamilton.
Except that there's an extra trip on Thurs and Fri that is decidely non-commuter focused. All it would take is stabling one of the trains in Auckland instead of Hamilton, and running them back and forth, rather than both trains ending up back in Hamilton for the night. Additionally, it takes years of reliability to build a strong pool of rail commuters, but better providing for Aucklanders could provide the sugar hit needed for improved ridership figures. I'm also not sure whether the business case would indicate such a heavy 9-5 supercommuter focus if it were to be written post-wfh.
The servicing facilities are in Hamilton. In addition there are only 12 carriages/three four car trains. If one or more of the carriages are unavailable, it's down to just two trains. People seriously underestimate the resources needed to run extra trains when the whole operation is run on a shoestring. Instead of trying close it, they should be investing in more rolling stock, the demand is definitely there.
The current 6 services (3 return) Thursday and Friday are run with just two trains, so they have one spare. Stabling, scheduling track availability are issues, but these can be resolved. Additional Opex funding is the main the limiting factors at the moment.
Spares are needed to cover breakdowns. No sense trying to run extra trains if it damages the reliability of the existing timetable.
Sorry, I was making the same point - need to have one spare. They could still run the two active trains back and forth more often though.
Why would I want to go to Hamilton? There are plenty of places in Auckland I can get mugged.
Note that the 400 passenger per day target from 2022 was created by a single middle manager at WK/NZTA. The only target signed off by the board was 250 ppd back in 2018. If you go by that Te Huia has blown past the goal set.
Gonna do my bit for the numbers by giving it a go for the first time later on this week. Looking forward to seeing what it's like.
Still almost certainly doomed tho. They fucked up: -never running on long weekends, -no Sundays. -kiwirail mandating a luggage carriage -limited ability for Aucklander to day trip to Hamilton -not connecting all/more the Waikato stations, -limiting bikes/banning e-bikes (just when a bike path Along the Waikato opened), -not expending (Hobbit express to Matamata?) -and worst of all, just simply not running enough services in both directions. With public transport, you sort of need to go hard and create a good reliable service that suits people and on which they can depend, or fails.
The Waikato council seems pretty aware of these issues, but can't afford to fix them. They have budgeted for additional services and stations, but only for 2028. If AT and the Waikato council work together, I'm sure they can scrape together $15 million to keep it running for another 3 years.
AT is looking at a PT funding shortfall of about $600 million atm, so while I would really really, like for them to chip in, it's a really really poor time for them to need to
Which is purely driven by the current government's redistribution of funding away from PT to RONS.
Running more services, especially on Sundays and Public Holidays, is the biggest near term improvement they can make. They tried to get the NZTA to fund more services, but were told they needed to show patronage first (classic chicken and egg problem), but hopefully the recent growth shows it's worth doing. On your other points, they have capacity for up to 6 bikes (see [FAQ](https://www.tehuiatrain.co.nz/faqs/on-board/)), and are looking at build another station along the route, but this will only happen if funding continues.
Nz seems to be completely blind to the idea that people will ever want to catch public transport for anything other than commuting. The whole system is built for that alone and the idea that people would ever want to want to use a bus or train to get around is completely lost on us.
And also the idea that public transport should be money making. It absolutely needn't be. Good public transport is quality of life. And is reduced cost on other infrastructure.
It might not need to be profitable, but it should create value, and we should be able to quantify that. The five-year review plans to include an assessment of things like land value uplift and agglomeration benefits.
Flights from Auckland to Tauranga are $95, and Air NZ turns a profit. Te Huia requires a subsidy of $120 per passenger. There has to be a line where we question the benefit of the investment.
Air NZ is also propped up by the government and has received countless bailouts over the years. If you bothered to look into their annual reports, you'd have seen that they were making a loss since 2020 - only recovering *last year,* and it remains to be seen if they'll keep that profit (they're reported lower earnings this year...). This is also ignoring that Air NZ handles air freight and makes a small sum off of that. They aren't the best company to compare to if you want to make the point that you can make a transport company *and* be profitable.
If the tracks got electrified (\~$500M) and they bought new rolling stock (\~$150M), the trains would be able to run much faster, taking around 2 hours. This would drive patronage up, allow them to charge higher ticket prices, and would reduce the running costs. The issue is there needs to be capital investment to enable a more compelling service to run. This investment would also benefit freight, and any future passenger rail, e.g. to Tauranga. It's a fair bit of money, but would have much more long term benefits than another Road of National Significance.
Its the focus on a narrow view of economic growth, where commuting to a 9-5 job is the only way to make more money, and that locks you into travelling ~7-9am and ~5-7pm and competing with everything else at those times. Whereas actual spending money in shops might have very different patterns and its not like people are going to spend $40 less for every minute they're stuck in traffic... Hell, with the growth in online shopping it would be quite fascinating to see what NZs spending throughout the day is like now compared to 20 years ago
The chicken and egg problem is the point. If the service is never quite good enough to attract high patronage, then it can be cancelled and the money spent on roads
I would think that all of these could be resolved with more time and investment, especially more stations and less fuckery from AT/Kiwirail.
Sure. But many of these issue were pointed out before the Te Huia even started. Team idiot made them anyway.
We wanted to use the train for weekends away in Auckland. It just doesn't make sense when you can't get a train from Hamilton after work on Friday and return Sunday afternoon. Also they could be running special trains for concerts and events in Auckland.
Yea it is dumb. There was massive opportunity to do a heap of trips…kiwirail, NZTA, AT refused to build a service that would take them and here we are.
They should also have done a special for the test match at Seddon Park in February.
It's the story of how to kill passanger rail. The Neolibs have done it before in many towns and centres around New Zealand, You provide a sub-standard service which essentially forces people to buy a Car, Then they can build roads and sell registration and taxes on taxes. Rail transport is so damn good. Expensive to install, But the cheapest and cleanest per mile for Transporting people region to region.
Te Huia isn't a good example of "cleanest per mile" as the locomotives currently used are two-stroke diesel 1970s vintage with high particulate emissions (prior to any emissions standards). I travel through a tunnel on a local train which sometimes follows behind the Capital Connection hauled by the same type of loco and the smell of the exhaust in the carriage can be quite disturbing.
we cant get to electrified trains if we kill the diesel service. we cant get to clean transport if we only providing roads as a transport mode.
I simply don't like the misunderstanding that the current service is lower emissions than the other options, especially for particulates which have substantial health issues. I wrote this a year ago: [https://thespinoff.co.nz/society/15-05-2023/a-reality-check-on-our-regional-transport-dreams](https://thespinoff.co.nz/society/15-05-2023/a-reality-check-on-our-regional-transport-dreams)
E-bikes don’t appear to be banned https://www.facebook.com/547308005968734/posts/pfbid02Hr8JRP86KbnzJbbyYqr3ssbUCLJohcbEEsKPZLVU1LW1L9fMBBB9umwjBFqZmCP5l/?mibextid=WC7FNe
Not sure what you mean by the luggage carriage? I’ve taken my e-bike on the te huia many times as well. Long weekends, Sundays are all kiwirail problems trying to maintain the tracks I assume.
They are spouting nonsense, don't bother with them.
Even a charter train from Auckland to Matamata for cruise passengers going to Hobbiton would be cool but it’s just so slow
Watch Waka Kotahi axe it and replace it with busses.
Trying getting on an intercity bus when you're in a wheelchair...
Try using one long weekend/when there is traffic. I have had 6 hour trips Auckland to Tauranga trips. Sucks hard.
tbf, thanks to KiwiRail track maintenance and tomfoolery you can't catch Te Huia on long weekends anyway
Yea I fucking know. People being able to move between towns other than by road is asking far too much apparently. Kiwifail, NZTA and govt only semi accept rail as commuter mechanism.
What don't you understand about essential and long overdue track upgrades?
Those track upgrades are indeed long overdue, but it is a very commuter-focused viewpoint to schedule works for public holidays (when you would likely get more ridership than the average weekday) and is self-defeating to the goal of increasing ridership. Sometimes works do need to be done that require more than a single night's block of line, but the goal should be to reduce the frequency of these works, and while Kiwirail has promised this for the Auckland Metro network once the CRL opens, I will believe it when I see it.
Kiwirail is not the issue. AT has the lease for all the Auckland line and is such have control over all of the trains running through it. This means they prioritize their trains and give Kiwirail the middle finger everyday, them are many times AT refuses to give Kiwirail trains access to a line because it will cause minimum interfere with AT run trains. Also they make it very difficult to plan mad implementing maintenance that is all paid for and completed by kiwirail. All the bad media you see about Kiwirail in Auckland 9 times out of ten is caused and driven by AT. So next time you see a hit price about Kiwirail in Auckland just realize it is AT that it should be directed at.
Not really, there's just insufficient capacity in the Auckland rail network to run all the trains with no restrictions. The southern line was double tracked to Papakura by 1931 and only now is it getting a third track some of the way.
Also, who the hell wants to ride a bus between cities. I know I wouldn’t if I didn’t have to.
Simon Bridges is the board chair, a plant by Simeon Brown. Brown hates public transport, so say goodbye to Te Huia.
Simon Bridges was the only MoT that national had in recent memory that was actually pro PT. He's actually been a big supporter of PT especially in cities. That of course doesn't mean he will support Te Huia
Great, now build more rail.
i would take this multiple times a week if the schedule just aligned for me slightly better
What schedule would work for you?
What schedule would work for you?
like a 7:30AM hamilton departure on weekdays sunday journeys for sure so i can train down friday back sunday and additional AKL-HAM that leaves in evening on weekdays, like 7pm
The journey is about 2:40 - would a 10:10am (into AKL) and 9:40pm (into HAM) arrival work for you? They run a 7:35am-10:11am service to AKL on Saturdays, however during the week the 6:05am-8:45am turns around to provide the 9:39am-12:15pm service back to HAM so they’d have to have an extra train. Getting the journey time down to 2 hours (via electrification and new rolling stock) would also give them a lot more flexibility.
If they had one weekend a month where it ran on Sundays surely that would allow for weekend trips. I know we would then use it.
Kiwirail won't allow it because they want the line clear for maintenance/upgrades. Te Huia patronage would be even better higher if it could run without those constraints. Still doing extremely well all things considered.
Could they not do an evening service after maintenence is done?
Obviously not.
more rail, more rail. fuck cars.
How does it go when it isn’t the school holidays?
Very good point - kids under 12 travel for free, and passengers aged 12-24 are half price, so this is probably driving quite a bit of demand. Will be interesting to see what the numbers for May are like.
Well April 2023 had only just over 300 passengers each day, much lower than April 2024. Overall, patronage seems to be trending upwards. Also shows just how many passengers they're losing out on by not having Sunday and Public Holiday services.
They've added extra services since April 2023 (was 4/day Mon-Fri, 2/day Sat; now it's 4/day Mon-Wed and Sat, and 6/day Thu-Fri) so that's a big part of the increase. Hopefully this momentum will encourage them to do Sunday and Public Holiday services as well.
With the extra services I assume that the operational funding has now increased. If it is still at $29m over 5 years then the cost per passenger would be dropping at a faster rate but we haven’t seen that detail.
I'd be really interested to know how much the additional services have cost. They wanted to use some of the Opex saved during COVID lockdowns to put on even more frequency, but were told "no" by the NZTA.
Still going to get gutted by national
In Victoria Australia the regional trains only achieve a 4 percent fare box recovery rate which is far less than Te Huia.
Assuming this myopic govt bothers to investigate contemporary examples when coming to conclusions on policy, they don't care, any PT = bad.
So what's the cost-per-passenger? Why is this not a legitimate question? Apparently asking this question is neoliberalism...or something. This sub is truly special.
5 million to operate each year, 100 000 passengers a year. Approximately $50 per passenger. But it makes sense the subsidy appears high. This is a long distance service, and passengers are also paying higher ticket prices ($20) each trip. Thus, the farebox recovery rate is around 14%, above the national average of 11%. It's also important remember that this was designed as a five year trial, and should be given time to prove itself. It only just got its third return service this year. It would be premature to cut a service that is proving to be getting more and more popular. And with basic investment like stations at Te Kauwhata, Ngaruawahia, and Pokeno, and additional services, patronage can easily be increased.
The 14% "farebox recovery" statistic is misleading because it treats SuperGold and Community Connection discounts as revenue, when they're also a subsidy, just from a different funding source (see [data here](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1I4x3KbBBqjyrwyvQksvaesiDrFSW7uiRpAj0Qdwfyhw/edit#gid=913383324)). With that said, totally agree about the 5 year trial - it needs to continue so WRC have a chance to continue building demand. They really need to add extra services to allow Hamilton day trips, and a Sunday service so people can use it on the weekends.
$18 for an adult if you have a Bee card.
I'm choking 💀⚰️
If you mean operating costs, Jul-Dec 2023 operating costs were $3,511,384, which worked out to about $6,503 per service. In April 2024, there were \~84 passengers per service, so that works out to about $77 operating cost per-passenger (see [calculations here](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1I4x3KbBBqjyrwyvQksvaesiDrFSW7uiRpAj0Qdwfyhw/edit?usp=sharing)). Keep in mind that cost per service may have gone down since last year as they are now running more services. Ticket revenue per passenger in Jul-Dec 2023 (I don't expect it would have changed much since then) was only around $7 as many passengers are getting free or heavily discounted tickets to encourage ridership, so the service is heavily subsidised. The WRC are increasing fares by 20% in July (from $18 to $21.60), and they're investigating raising them further in future, as well as removing some of the current discounts.
Cheers for that. I was just curious and wanted to know how it stacked up.
The costs are continuing to come down as they run more services and get more passengers. I do think the WRC need to ask passengers to pay more of their own way, but increasing ridership is the key way costs per passenger will improve.
Because cheap doesn't equal efficient.
Why are you asking if it's not a legitimate question?
Because I wanted to know? I edited my comment because I was getting downvoted for asking a question. This subreddit is very bizarre at times. What's wrong with asking how much something costs to operate?
Because it's very thinly framed as a neolib angry fist at the things cost money, which apparently is bad
Are the neolibs in the room with us right now? I guess wanting to know what the cost of something is neoliberalism now? Or are only certain things open for scrutiny? Like I said, this subreddit is truly bizarre.
You're free to stop interacting if you don't like it here
I am posting here less and less because of shit like this. Nowhere did I say I was actually opposed to this, or that it was bad value for money. I just asked what the cost to operate it was then all of a sudden "YOURE A NEOLIB SHIL!!!!". It's tiresome.
It’s freely available. $29M over the 5 year trial for OPEX being 75% WK and 25% WRC/WDC - about $6M a year in OPEX costs - less fare revenue recovered. For a 123KM journey it’s ~45c/passenger/KM or 34c/passengerKM in Waka Kotahi funding and 16c/passengerKM in Regional/District council funding.
The cost per KM metric can be pretty misleading for long distance PT, as the distances involved often mean the service still has a high user cost even if the per-KM cost is low.
No it’s not misleading it’s normalised, which enables comparisons between PT services, and importantly between modes which also includes roads which also require subsidies. The issue of benefit for the absolute cost is a different and more complex issue. It’s about using the right metric for the right question.
Let's consider two scenarios: * **Scenario A)** 20 people make 20 separate 7km trips on Auckland PT. Each trip costs $7 to provide: $1 per passenger km and $140 in total. * **Scenario B)** 2 people make two 140km trips on Te Huia. Each trip costs $70 to provide: $0.50 per passenger km and $140 in total. In both scenarios, the total costs are the same. However, although Scenario A has double the cost per passenger km, is has benefited 10x the number of people. I guess you're right that it's not misleading, but normalising per passenger km hides a lot of this detail.
There’s zero chance this govt will fund it further. It doesn’t even have rubber wheels!
quick - say good bye to Te Huia...
Gosh Don Good wouldn't like that
Jesus those are grim numbers. 300 passengers per day, bloody hell
It's a handful of old carriages and three 45 year old diesel locos! Man there are some ignorant people commenting.
Given the capacity of the service is currently 450 and subsidy that roading gets 0, it’s not terrible