Six ideas to secure Te Huia's Future
With Te Huia now having funding secure through to 2026, now is the time to secure its future as a permanent service. Here are six ideas on how to do this.
[Apologies for the lengthy hiatus from posting. No, I’m not dead - just in Australia working on public transport in Queensland. But I’m back and fully intending to resume regular blogging.]
For the uninitiated, Te Huia is a regional rail service between Hamilton and Auckland, running on a five year trial from 2021-2026. It runs twice a day Monday to Wednesday and Saturdays, three times a day on Thursday and Friday, and does not operate on Sundays, public holidays nor over the Christmas - New Year break. It has had a range of challenges and as I said sarcastically in a previous post of mine, “it has suffered more assassination attempts than Fidel Castro.”
Firstly, an enormous shout-out to the huge efforts from the Waikato and across the Motu that ensured continued funding by Waka Kotahi for the remainder of Te Huia’s five-year trial period. This was a sign of people power at its finest with diverse groups coming together for a common cause and speaking with a single voice. Kia kaha!
Even though the Waka Kotahi funding assistance rate for Te Huia is dropping in steps from 75.5 per cent to 70 per cent in 2024/25 and 60 per cent in 2025/26, Waikato Regional Council is stumping up the difference from its reserves. Waikato Regional Council, Hamilton City Council and Waikato District Council deserve significant kudos for sticking with Te Huia through its various existential challenges. Without sustained political momentum and stamina over many years, along with strong public support, we simply would not have Te Huia.
Now for some ideas on how to entrench Te Huia as an integral part of Aotearoa’s public transport network.
1. More station stops in the Waikato
I have covered work to date on additional station stops in this earlier blog post. I recommend reading this to get up to speed if you’re not familiar with the history.
There isn’t much to update on this which is sad, given the strong growth in the Upper North Waikato communities on the Te Huia route that are not station stops for the service. And it’s sad to note that the Waikato District Council Annual Plan does not include funding to advance work on station stops in their district at Tūākau, Pōkeno and Te Kauwhata. In particular, most employed people in Tūākau and Pōkeno work in Auckland but currently only have local bus service as far as Pukekohe.
However, Waikato District Council is investing in park and ride at Huntly Station which is a positive. But work does need to proceed at pace on serving the fast-growing Upper North Waikato communities, which have extremely limited transport choice apart from driving.
However, hope is not lost. Waikato District Council this year deferred doing a Long Term Plan by one year and instead produced an Enhanced Annual Plan for the 2024/ 2025 financial year. This means that the opportunity is not lost to include funding for new stations in its Long Term Plan process which will now take place next year. One option to contribute to station funding could be a targeted rate on the catchment area for individual stations. This would ensure a tight connection between payee and beneficiary as everyone, including car drivers, benefit from increased use of public transport.
2. More frequency
The unfortunate consequence of Waikato Regional Council having to dip into its Te Huia reserves to fund the increased local funding share is that it takes away a potential source of revenue to fund Te Huia service improvements.
It’s worth recollecting that the original trial for Te Huia was intended to build up to three return trips on weekdays, two return trips on Saturdays and a single return trip on Sundays. However, as I outlined in an earlier post, Waka Kotahi refused to rephase existing committed Te Huia funding to enable this to happen. This has limited Waikato Regional Council’s ability to fund service improvements beyond adding an additional return trip on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays from 8 February 2024.
Those service improvements generated significant patronage improvements, giving the truth to Jarrett Walker’s famous maxim: “Frequency is Freedom.”
But now that much of the Southern Line Rail Network Rebuild of the Auckland metro network is due to wrap up in January 2025, it is timely to ask why there shouldn’t be Sunday and public holiday Te Huia services from that point.
For example, a single Sunday and public holiday return trip could come up from Hamilton mid-afternoon, connecting via Puhinui Station to Auckland Transport’s Airport Link bus, enabling easy access for Waikato folks to evening international flight departures from Auckland Airport as well as enabling weekend trips away by rail for Aucklanders. This service could return early evening to Hamilton, in turn enabling Waikato folks to have a weekend in Auckland and travel by train in both directions.
Another idea would be to make unbooked seats on KiwiRail’s Great Journeys of New Zealand Northern Explorer train between Hamilton and Auckland available at Te Huia prices to maximise both revenue for KiwiRail and maximise affordable train travel choice between Hamilton and Auckland.
3. Better bus connections at both ends
There are three places where bus connections to and from Te Huia are pretty good - Rotokauri, Papakura and Puhinui. And two places - Hamilton Frankton and Auckland Strand - where they are lousy to non-existent.
At Hamilton Frankton Station, commuter buses from Tokoroa and Te Kuiti, that only operate a single peak trip per direction, are parked up during the day. They would be better utilised for providing trips into the Hamilton Transport Centre, for example meeting the the 12:15pm arrival from Auckland and connecting to the 2:05pm departure for Auckland.
For early morning departures, some early trips on the 3 Dinsdale or 19 Bremworth buses from the Hamilton Transport Centre passing Hamilton Frankton Station on Queens Avenue would be of assistance to better connect Hamilton City Centre to the station.
As for Auckland, AT’s 755 bus does serve Auckland Strand Station. From the city centre, this stops right outside Auckland Strand Station. But in the opposite direction, it involves crossing State Highway 16, the major truck route connecting the Port of Auckland with the motorway network. While there are pedestrian signals not far from the station entrance, the nearest inbound 755 stop is over 200 metres away and lacks shelter. As such, it leaves much to be desired in terms of safety and customer experience.
In the inbound direction, having a connecting bus waiting right outside the station to take people into the city centre would be a significant improvement in the customer experience. This is something that Auckland should be providing to support the success of Te Huia.
4. A station stop in Pukekohe
Rail electrification between Papakura and Pukekohe and the upgraded Pukekohe Station are soon to be completed. But urban train service is unable to resume from Pukekohe until early 2025 as work needs to be completed on the Rail Network Rebuild between Papakura and Pukekohe in the intervening period.
This leaves Pukekohe without any train service - suspended since work started on the electrification project - for up to another eight months. So it would seem obvious that Te Huia could stop at the upgraded station, at least in the meantime, and thereby give Pukekohe residents access to rail, including the ability to access the entire Auckland metro rail network by transfer at either Papakura or Puhinui stations.
This would be a significant benefit to both Te Huia and to Pukekohe and would enable Pukekohe to have some train service while waiting for the completion of the Rail Network Rebuild in January 2025. And this is a benefit that Auckland should be prepared to pay for.
5. Auckland paying its fair share
When it comes to public transport, both the origin and the destination benefit from having the service. The origin benefits as it gives people access to the service and the destination benefits from people making use of what the destination offers - and this includes spending money at the destination.
Auckland benefits doubly from Te Huia. First, from people in the Waikato spending money in Auckland. And secondly, from Aucklanders who use the service to get to the Waikato. At present, the Waikato is paying for both of these benefits to Auckland.
According to Waikato Regional Council figures, 22 per cent of Te Huia’s passengers are from Auckland1. Therefore, just over one fifth of Te Huia’s benefits are accruing to Aucklanders. In this instance, would it not be fair and equitable for Auckland to be contributing one-fifth of the opex for running the service?
6. The need for more speed
Let’s be clear, Te Huia does not need to break the land speed record for it to be successful. But it could do with a few measures to speed it up, especially within the Auckland rail network where many of its delays occur.
From my various trips on Te Huia, the rough split of timing is as follows:
Hamilton to Pukekohe - 86 kilometres in 90 minutes - average speed 57 km/h
Pukekohe to Auckland Strand - 52 kilometres in 70 minutes - average speed 45 km/h
Between Hamilton and Pukekohe, trains generally run at line speed varying from around 60 km/h through the single-track Whangamarino Swamp section to 80 km/h from the Whangamarino Swamp to Pukekohe and up to 100km/h on some stretches between Hamilton and Te Kauwhata.
In the immediate term, there’s not much to be done with the Auckland metro network until the Rail Network Rebuild wraps up on the Southern Line. But KiwiRail, the rail network controller, does have a nasty habit of dispatching a northbound metro services from Papakura just before Te Huia, guaranteeing that Te Huia will be stuck behind a metro service at least as far as Westfield Junction. Letting Te Huia go first would give it a clear run at least as far as Wiri Junction, especially as Te Huia is generally ready to depart before the metro service.
But from January 2025, the rail network rebuild is scheduled to be complete to Pukekohe, enabling resumption of previous line speeds with the lifting of many of the remaining temporary speed restrictions. This should enable some worthwhile speed improvements.
The opening of the Third Main between Wiri and Westfield Junction could enable faster northbound journeys for Te Huia but would most likely involve building a third platform face on the western side of Puhinui Station, or an additional turnout north of Puhinui Station.
Now that Te Huia is finally represented on the KiwiRail timetable committee, hopefully its voice will be heard in the competing priorities between itself, AT Metro services KiwiRail freight and Great Journeys of NZ services, for smoother movement through the busy Auckland metro network.
Longer-term, the double-tracking of the current slow single track section through the Whangamarino Swamp would achieve significant capacity and travel time improvements for freight and passenger transport in the Upper North Island. It would also mean that the entirety of the North Island Main Trunk line between Auckland and Hamilton would be double-tracked (except for the Ngāruawāhia Rail Bridge).
Final thoughts
Te Huia has a two-year period before its trial is due to be completed in mid-2026. This means that work needs to start now on the step needed to guarantee its long-term success as an important part of the national public transport network.
While some of the above suggestions can be implemented quickly, others will take time, such as new station stops, so it’s imperative that this work starts now.
The Waikato has put in the hard yards and deserves our gratitude for this. Now it’s Auckland’s turn to step up to the plate and make a positive contribution, given that it is a significant beneficiary of the service, yet contributes nothing towards it.
We should not assume from the recent Waka Kotahi funding decision that Te Huia’s future is secure. It is still in a trial period and the more successful the trial is, the more likely it is that Te Huia will become a permanent service. Two years may sound like a long time, but the wheels of transport planning in Aotearoa can spin very slowly and two years will disappear very quickly. The time for action to secure Te Huia’s permanent role is now.
Te Huia Customer Satisfaction Survey 2023, page 34
I wonder, is there absolutely any way to stuff it in into Britomart post CRL instead of Strand station which is basically in the middle of nowhere?
If all or most city trains are running through, Te Huia occupying one of three stub-end tracks for boarding/alighting should be possible, shouldn't it? That would be massively beneficial not only from the overall convenience point of view, but also in terms of service promotion: everyone who takes trains in Auckland will see it and thereby get to know it exists.
Great piece Darren. In total agreement on all. Once the P2P rebuild work is done there are no reasons why Sunday and Public Holiday long weekends should not be serviced. Having weekends closed down to both Te Huia and also local AKL services is really a constraint on making services more popular and established. How many people would've loved to have taken a train in the past few years but no service ran? There's been a lot of lost opportunity with all the project works of the past few years.
I am onboard (excuse the pun!) with using the Northern Explorer as an added Te Huia service. Infact I would go further by adding say the Te Huia cafe car and one of the regular carriages to the consist (Hey NE consist is not exactly the biggest of trains to start with) as I have heard for starters that the Te Huia fleet as a whole is not being used to it's maximum. It would mean two carriages being sometime based in AKL. But it would give Te Huia an ex AKL earlier morning service 3x a week (Mon, Thu, Sat), and importantly an ex Hamilton to AKL service on Sunday afternoon. That might be an economic way to "add" services. And i have no problem merging liveries. Look at any European international trains, day and night, and there's many a train with varied liveries. If it's good enough for the Europeans, it's good enough for us. They also don't have a problem with shunting carriages off and on at intermediate points.
I am glad you shone a light on AKL. We need a campaign to bring to bear pressure on AT and also the mayor who made a stupidly ignorant remark about Te Huia last year. One of the most important areas that helped the Capital Connection survive and become established to the point it is basically now permanent and will have new trains and more services in about 5 years is the fact that it had local and regional govt buy in and support at both ends.
Definitely needs last mile improvements at both ends. I've seen those regional buses at Frankton. There should be specific connections at Frankton. The lack of can do on this, and also having Frankton Stn actually open by Hamilton City Council has been pretty poor. I also ask if there regional buses coming to Frankton Station, then why aren't there regional connections to/from with the train? Wouldn't it be great if you could travel from Tokoroa/Matamata/Cambridge/te Awamutu/Otorohanga/Te Kuiti and catching the train or vice versa? The ambivalence of AT towards Te Huia. Well that's well-known. Again we have to change the ignorant attitude of the leadership there.
I surely hope one additional Nth Waikato Station gets off the ground before the trial ends. Even if they chose Pokeno in the middle of the three and had bus connections to and from Te kauwhata and Tuakau (though that latter one already has connections to Pukekohe that may be better for their residents), that would in the short term still be an improvement.
A couple of things you didn't mention. 1) Chris Hipkins and Labour to get some courage and back this 100% as a permanent service in the next election campaign. Supporters of this service can't afford them to be wishy-washy in their support. 2) One of my only pieces of criticism of the Waikato councils, particularly the Regional Council which is the leader in this, is the use of reserved funds to continue the service, while maintaining a 100% gold card holder discount. That is insane and incredibly poor policy decision-making from them. not even in Europe or Japan etc do senior citizens get a 100% discount for inter-regional travel. I have no problem with a 50% discount for Gold card holders but 100% is not supporting the service and the service needs to still be making some revenue. In my opinion it simply cannot afford to have people on it travelling for free. If Gold Card holders were paying at least 50% then we might very well find that improvements to the service are possible. So by allowing FOC travel for gold card holders they are effectively making service improvements more difficult. so having such an FOC travel policy just seems misguided to me.
I agree that when it comes to speed of the service, apart from the single track part through the swamp, the slowest part is going through AKL. And yes, the last time I tool Te Huia southbound we were making probs the best speed I've had on TH through to Westfield, when we came to a stop and let a local Southern Line service through, which we were then behind for the rest of the way down south until Papakura. I just thought "Who in train control gave that order? Bloody bonkers!" If we had kept going we would've been in front of them the whole way anyway. I cannot understand why that call was made. at least finally as you say WRC is now on the timetabling committee. let us hope it bears fruit! Lastly on speed and the 3rd Main, has there been any update on when it's actually expected to be in operation? Obviously Middlemore Stn re-fit is in progress at the moment, and then they need to do the tracks and OLE wires north and south of the station but it'd be nice if KR actually gave some kind of a timeline for finish of that project.