New Zealand needs Inter-City trains.

 

So I recently returned from a month-long holiday in New Zealand, and in terms of trains it was certainly an eye-opening trip. In the UK we are used to being able to take a train anywhere in the country any time we want and if we miss it there will be another one along in a few minutes, or a few hours at the most. In New Zealand, this simply isn’t the case. The suburban commuter networks around Wellington and Auckland are modern and frequent, but if you want to travel between the two cities, well… you can’t. The only passenger train between new Zealand’s two biggest cities is Kiwirail’s “Northern Explorer”, which is a scenic tourist train that runs once every other day.  It goes north one day and returns south the next day.  If you want to go to Auckland from Wellington on the day it’s going from Wellington to Auckland, too bad. You’re going to have to fly instead. Forcing people to fly when there is a railway there is frankly disgraceful when there is a climate emergency on. The less populous South island is even worse off for passenger trains. There are no commuter trains at all connecting any towns in the South island, just the once-a-day tourist trains, the “Coastal Pacific”, which connects Christchurch with the ferry port of Picton, and the "TranzAlpine", which connects Christchurch with Greymouth on the West Coast. The city of Dunedin to the south of Christchurch has no regular train link to Christchurch, just a few tourist lines that run a couple of times a month.

Some of the problems New Zealand has stem from its low population density. With just 49 people per square mile (compared to 715 in the UK or 1346 in the Netherlands), New Zealand doesn’t have enough customers for the kind of frequency we’re used to in more populous countries. Also, the track gauge of 3’6” used in New Zealand prohibits the kind of high speeds we see in countries with standard or broad gauge railways. That’s not to say a daily Picton-Christchurch-Dunedin or Auckland-Wellington service wouldn’t work. Certainly Air New Zealand has enough customers on these routes, but of course the plane can do the trip a lot faster. But as the world seeks to cut down on air pollution, reviving these trains would give citizens and tourists in New Zealand a greener choice. Campaign group "Save our trains" is putting pressure on the New Zealand government to restore Inter-city rail travel in Aotearoa.