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.
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.
That's a good point. How many of Auckland's local train users 1) know and 2) have actually ever used the service. That's why as part of the mission to get AKL onboard and supporting the service, a focus on AKL rail users should be part of that campaign (Signage and posters at Waitematā and other esp core stations, leaflets to pax on local train if AT allows, social media on popular AKL PT channels etc)
Ilya, not with the current Te Huia rolling stock but yes with future hybrid rolling stock, so long as it's bi-mode (electric and battery) and not tri-mode (electric, battery and diesel), Te Huia could go into Britomart which would be enormously advantageous over the current termination point at Auckland Strand Station.
Hi Darren, as long as not using the diesel mode wouldn't tri-mode still be ok? Or there is some other limiting factor? With many more local train services after CRL opening, even with terminal tracks still at Waitematā Station, are there still going to be slots available? Or even if there are, will possibly the issue still be persuading AT to hand over such slots?
Apparently, even having a diesel tank, even if unused, would exclude tri-mode trains from Waitematā/ Britomart Station. It has to do with eliminating potential ignition sources in an underground station. My understanding is that bi-mode, with suitable battery range, will cover the current 76km gap in electrification between Te Rapa and (soon-to-be) Pukekohe.
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.
Thanks for those thoughts. For off-peak and Saturday trains, the SuperGold free travel is funded by central government so there is some revenue for those trips. But not for the peak trips (before 9am and 3.00pm to 6:30pm on weekdays). As for Middlemore, your guess is as good as mine. This section was held up quite a bit by an appeal by Te Whatu Ora/ Health NZ to the Environment Court concerned about staff carpkarking at Middlemore Hospital. It's the last piece in the Third Main which will have significant network benefits when finally complete and commissioned.
Thanks Darren. Wow. That's interesting. Central govt actually funded some of the goldcard trips. I guess that is from NZ First being in govt in 2017-2020 when this was being established. That still seems an incredible outlier, in an international sense. I don't recall seeing senior citizen 100% discount on European, North American, or Japanese inter-regional or international (Europe, North American) rail. I would still prefer that 50% of that funding be spent on service development (of course not likely under this govt but if there's a change to a Labour-Greens-TPM one without NZ First it should be looked at as part of the change to a permanent service and part of that funding reallocated), and that non-peak services have a 50% discount.
Yes I was aware that from te Whatu Ora/Counties-Manukau HB there was some pushback over KR's plans that had pushed out the re-development of Middlemore Stn so that's it's held up the finishing of the project. It's likely the project would be finished/closed to finishing by now if there hadn't been disagreement and the station redevelopment had started much earlier.
Great summary of the potential improvements! As there's limited funding, I'm interested to get your thoughts on the trade-offs that will be need to be made.
1. Frequency: I'm surprised you didn't put this first, as it's the biggest opportunity for increasing patronage. Te Huia had its best patronage on record in May with 9,466 passengers [1] and this growth has largely been driven by the additional services.
The Sunday and public holiday service you mentioned is the biggest opportunity to grow ridership, and it would also boost the Hamilton hospitality industry by enabling overnight weekend trips. Do we know what NZTA would need to see for funding for additional services to be approved?
2. Journey time: It's great that WRC has a seat at the table on the timetable committee, and hopefully journey time will improve with the rebuild completing next year. The next meaningful improvements will need to come from track improvements, new rolling stock, and electrification.
I believe KiwiRail are doing a business case for golden-triangle electrification. Te Huia should also be added to the hybrid rolling stock order that Wellington is making for 2028/29. Do you know of any progress on either of these projects?
3. New stations: I'm in support of the Pukekohe stop while the rebuild is happening, but concerned about the cost of the new Waikato stations relative to what those funds could be spent on (namely frequency).
At $5-7M per station [2], these funds could cover the council contribution for the entire service for another for another 2-3 years, potentially enabling the service to continue running until the delivery of hybrid rolling stock in 2029. Does the potential patronage from Tuakau, Pōkeno, or Te Kauwhata justify this in the near term?
4. Fares: It would be a lot easier to make the case for additional funding (from NZTA or Auckland) if passengers paid a larger share of the costs. The new base fare from July of $21.60 is still very low for the value being provided [3]. Intercity Bus fares vary from $20 to $46 for HAM->AKL; does the train really need to undercut these, especially given the passenger experience is a lot better on the train?
A $25 base fare, with a maximum of 50% discount for concessions (removing the free SuperGold and child fares), would still be great value and the extra ticket revenue could be enough to pay for the Sunday / Public Holiday services. Do you think these fares could be increased, given the value the service provides, or will it be too much of a deterrent?
Thanks for those thoughts. There was no particular order to my six suggestions and I agree that frequency is key. The original funding included a Sunday return service and three trains a day Monday to Friday. But Waka Kotahi refused to reallocate existing committed funds to enable these improvements and Waikato Regional Council did what they could with their share - additional return trips Thursday to Saturday. There are still electrification and rolling stock business cases underway. The first likely to focus on the Golden Triangle and the second on leveraging the Lower North Island hybrid rolling stock order for a long term Te Huia rolling stock solution. There's big growth in the Upper North Waikato and station costs are largely sunk - spend one and reap benefits for many decades, so I think additional stations are important. Interesting question about farebox recovery. Suffice to note that for a commuter focused service, Capital Connection charges $35 for a similar distance to Te Huia. But for other customers, price is likely to be a significant barrier to use. And if you are focused on patronage, any fare increase will have a negative patronage impact.
I looked through some of the submissions on the LTP and there were multiple people who ride Te Huia frequently on the SuperGold fares who said they'd be happy to pay if it meant the service would continue. With a $25 base fare, the SuperGold far would only be $12.50 at 50% discount, so I'd hope that wouldn't be a massive barrier.
With all the pushback about subsidies during the 2 year review, I think it's good for the WRC to show that people are willing to pay for the value the service provides. Even at $25 it's still heavily subsidised, but the higher farebox recovery ratio would make it harder for the nay-sayers to push back.
If they add 1) a Sunday service, 2) an Auckland-to-Hamilton day-trip friendly service, and 3) a stop at Pukekohe, they'll be able to increase the share of Aucklanders benefiting, making a stronger case for Auckland to contribute to the operating costs (helping offset the decreased funding from NZTA).
Then, when they get the new rolling stock, Te Huia will be able to act as an express service for Pukekohe, Papakura, and Puhinui into (and out of) Britomart. It could be an hourly express service as well as serving Hamilton. Motu Move will make this simple from a payments perspective, it'd just need to be timetabled in.
If there was also a new station in North Waikato (my preference would be Pōkeno as it would make a good drop-off/pick-up point for people coming from State Highway 2), that'd bring the total stops to 7, matching the Capital Connection.
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.
That's a good point. How many of Auckland's local train users 1) know and 2) have actually ever used the service. That's why as part of the mission to get AKL onboard and supporting the service, a focus on AKL rail users should be part of that campaign (Signage and posters at Waitematā and other esp core stations, leaflets to pax on local train if AT allows, social media on popular AKL PT channels etc)
Ilya, not with the current Te Huia rolling stock but yes with future hybrid rolling stock, so long as it's bi-mode (electric and battery) and not tri-mode (electric, battery and diesel), Te Huia could go into Britomart which would be enormously advantageous over the current termination point at Auckland Strand Station.
Hi Darren, as long as not using the diesel mode wouldn't tri-mode still be ok? Or there is some other limiting factor? With many more local train services after CRL opening, even with terminal tracks still at Waitematā Station, are there still going to be slots available? Or even if there are, will possibly the issue still be persuading AT to hand over such slots?
Apparently, even having a diesel tank, even if unused, would exclude tri-mode trains from Waitematā/ Britomart Station. It has to do with eliminating potential ignition sources in an underground station. My understanding is that bi-mode, with suitable battery range, will cover the current 76km gap in electrification between Te Rapa and (soon-to-be) Pukekohe.
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.
Thanks for those thoughts. For off-peak and Saturday trains, the SuperGold free travel is funded by central government so there is some revenue for those trips. But not for the peak trips (before 9am and 3.00pm to 6:30pm on weekdays). As for Middlemore, your guess is as good as mine. This section was held up quite a bit by an appeal by Te Whatu Ora/ Health NZ to the Environment Court concerned about staff carpkarking at Middlemore Hospital. It's the last piece in the Third Main which will have significant network benefits when finally complete and commissioned.
Thanks Darren. Wow. That's interesting. Central govt actually funded some of the goldcard trips. I guess that is from NZ First being in govt in 2017-2020 when this was being established. That still seems an incredible outlier, in an international sense. I don't recall seeing senior citizen 100% discount on European, North American, or Japanese inter-regional or international (Europe, North American) rail. I would still prefer that 50% of that funding be spent on service development (of course not likely under this govt but if there's a change to a Labour-Greens-TPM one without NZ First it should be looked at as part of the change to a permanent service and part of that funding reallocated), and that non-peak services have a 50% discount.
Yes I was aware that from te Whatu Ora/Counties-Manukau HB there was some pushback over KR's plans that had pushed out the re-development of Middlemore Stn so that's it's held up the finishing of the project. It's likely the project would be finished/closed to finishing by now if there hadn't been disagreement and the station redevelopment had started much earlier.
Great summary of the potential improvements! As there's limited funding, I'm interested to get your thoughts on the trade-offs that will be need to be made.
1. Frequency: I'm surprised you didn't put this first, as it's the biggest opportunity for increasing patronage. Te Huia had its best patronage on record in May with 9,466 passengers [1] and this growth has largely been driven by the additional services.
The Sunday and public holiday service you mentioned is the biggest opportunity to grow ridership, and it would also boost the Hamilton hospitality industry by enabling overnight weekend trips. Do we know what NZTA would need to see for funding for additional services to be approved?
2. Journey time: It's great that WRC has a seat at the table on the timetable committee, and hopefully journey time will improve with the rebuild completing next year. The next meaningful improvements will need to come from track improvements, new rolling stock, and electrification.
I believe KiwiRail are doing a business case for golden-triangle electrification. Te Huia should also be added to the hybrid rolling stock order that Wellington is making for 2028/29. Do you know of any progress on either of these projects?
3. New stations: I'm in support of the Pukekohe stop while the rebuild is happening, but concerned about the cost of the new Waikato stations relative to what those funds could be spent on (namely frequency).
At $5-7M per station [2], these funds could cover the council contribution for the entire service for another for another 2-3 years, potentially enabling the service to continue running until the delivery of hybrid rolling stock in 2029. Does the potential patronage from Tuakau, Pōkeno, or Te Kauwhata justify this in the near term?
4. Fares: It would be a lot easier to make the case for additional funding (from NZTA or Auckland) if passengers paid a larger share of the costs. The new base fare from July of $21.60 is still very low for the value being provided [3]. Intercity Bus fares vary from $20 to $46 for HAM->AKL; does the train really need to undercut these, especially given the passenger experience is a lot better on the train?
A $25 base fare, with a maximum of 50% discount for concessions (removing the free SuperGold and child fares), would still be great value and the extra ticket revenue could be enough to pay for the Sunday / Public Holiday services. Do you think these fares could be increased, given the value the service provides, or will it be too much of a deterrent?
[1] https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1_9ZU5STTxUJU5LyD4LBVE4IeDMSWU74VstL5OpAKfVI/edit?gid=2133097286#gid=2133097286
[2] https://waikatorc.sharepoint.com/sites/FutureProofAdministration/Shared%20Documents/Forms/AllItems.aspx?id=%2Fsites%2FFutureProofAdministration%2FShared%20Documents%2FGeneral%2FFuture%20Proof%20Implementation%20Committee%2FFuture%20Proof%20Public%20Transport%20Sub%20Committee%2F2023%2D08%2D25%2F2023%2D08%2D25%20%2D%20Future%20Proof%20Public%20Transport%20Subcommittee%20Agenda%20%2D%2025%20August%202023%2Epdf&parent=%2Fsites%2FFutureProofAdministration%2FShared%20Documents%2FGeneral%2FFuture%20Proof%20Implementation%20Committee%2FFuture%20Proof%20Public%20Transport%20Sub%20Committee%2F2023%2D08%2D25&p=true&ga=1
[3] https://tehuiatrain.co.nz/fares/fares-are-changing/
Thanks for those thoughts. There was no particular order to my six suggestions and I agree that frequency is key. The original funding included a Sunday return service and three trains a day Monday to Friday. But Waka Kotahi refused to reallocate existing committed funds to enable these improvements and Waikato Regional Council did what they could with their share - additional return trips Thursday to Saturday. There are still electrification and rolling stock business cases underway. The first likely to focus on the Golden Triangle and the second on leveraging the Lower North Island hybrid rolling stock order for a long term Te Huia rolling stock solution. There's big growth in the Upper North Waikato and station costs are largely sunk - spend one and reap benefits for many decades, so I think additional stations are important. Interesting question about farebox recovery. Suffice to note that for a commuter focused service, Capital Connection charges $35 for a similar distance to Te Huia. But for other customers, price is likely to be a significant barrier to use. And if you are focused on patronage, any fare increase will have a negative patronage impact.
I looked through some of the submissions on the LTP and there were multiple people who ride Te Huia frequently on the SuperGold fares who said they'd be happy to pay if it meant the service would continue. With a $25 base fare, the SuperGold far would only be $12.50 at 50% discount, so I'd hope that wouldn't be a massive barrier.
With all the pushback about subsidies during the 2 year review, I think it's good for the WRC to show that people are willing to pay for the value the service provides. Even at $25 it's still heavily subsidised, but the higher farebox recovery ratio would make it harder for the nay-sayers to push back.
If they add 1) a Sunday service, 2) an Auckland-to-Hamilton day-trip friendly service, and 3) a stop at Pukekohe, they'll be able to increase the share of Aucklanders benefiting, making a stronger case for Auckland to contribute to the operating costs (helping offset the decreased funding from NZTA).
Then, when they get the new rolling stock, Te Huia will be able to act as an express service for Pukekohe, Papakura, and Puhinui into (and out of) Britomart. It could be an hourly express service as well as serving Hamilton. Motu Move will make this simple from a payments perspective, it'd just need to be timetabled in.
If there was also a new station in North Waikato (my preference would be Pōkeno as it would make a good drop-off/pick-up point for people coming from State Highway 2), that'd bring the total stops to 7, matching the Capital Connection.
Fantastic overview and common sense suggestions. Thanks for your work.