The South Island is still Aotearoa's forgotten island
The South Island's public transport networks deserves some love, including in Christchurch, Dunedin and Queenstown, as well as a revived Southerner train. But this seems further away than ever.
[Updated 10 July 2024 with the latest developments in Te Waipounamu/ South Island]
In Aotearoa, it seems to be a case of a Tale of Two Islands, especially when it comes to public transport investment. And even roading barely gets a look in. It’s high time for the South Island to get some public transport love.
While the North Island may dominate population and economic activity, that economic activity would quickly grind to a halt if not for electricity from the lower South Island. The South Island also has many of the crown jewels in Aotearoa’s tourism crown, which is one of our largest industries and earners of foreign exchange. For Aotearoa to function sustainably, all parts of Aotearoa need sustainable transport choices, not just the cores of a few of the largest North Island cities.
Straitened times on Cook Strait
There was a decision by the coalition government - sometimes disparagingly referred to as the “coalition of clowns” - to pull the plug on new, larger, more sustainable rail-enabled interisland ferries connecting the north and south islands. If you dive just beneath the surface, it seems plausible that a motivation for casting the South Island adrift is hostility to rail-enabled ferries which, in turn, threatens the viability of the South Island rail network and would put a lot more trucks on South Island state highways. If we want rail to be the backbone of sustainable mobility in Aotearoa, then cutting it off mid-spine would not appear to be a good way to go about that.
According to former Minister of Railways, Richard Prebble, “the world-famous consultants”, Booz, Allan and Hamilton modelled New Zealand railways. The modelling revealed the key to a sustainable railway is the rail ferries. The ferries extend the main trunk railway line making sending freight by rail economic. [Finance Minister] Nicola Willis says, “We want a Toyota, not a Ferrari”. A Toyota is not going to be able to carry rail freight between the islands1.”
If we want rail to be the backbone of sustainable mobility in Aotearoa, then cutting it off
mid-spine would not appear to be a good way to go about that.
This is a clear and present danger for Aotearoa. Without rail-enabled inter-island ferries as a crucial middle link in the national freight network, the case for a nationally integrated public transport network for Aotearoa with rail as its backbone would literally be cut in two.
Poor old Christchurch
While the interisland ferry non-decision is bad enough, the Coalition government refused to clarify if they will honour the commitment of the previous government to accelerate investment in Christchurch’s Public Transport Futures2. The $78 million investment was to provide more frequent bus service, deliver 100 more buses, more than 470 extra bus shelters, almost 200 real-time display units and 22 kilometres of dedicated bus lanes. It was intended to increase the speed of the programme’s roll-out to 5-6 years, down from the originally planned 10-12 years3.
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Christchurch already receives significantly less public transport funding per capita than Wellington and Auckland. The city’s bus system is about 10 per cent above its pre-pandemic patronage level at around 14 million trips per year, which is still far below the patronage levels (19 million trips per year) achieved before the devastating 2010 and 2011 earthquakes. It is also the largest city in Australasia not to have any form of higher order public transport, whereas the slightly smaller capital city of Wellington has one of the most mature urban rail networks for a city its size in Australasia.
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While Christchurch’s bus network has strong bones and there are strong patronage responses to service improvements such as the route 8 “Port to Port” bus between Lyttelton and Christchurch Airport, implemented on 4 September 2023, there is much scope for service improvements, especially to outlying parts of the city such as Rolleston and Rangiora which only have hourly bus service evenings and weekends. The $78 million in promised funding would have significantly accelerated these service improvements. From my read, this money is no longer available and consequently desperately needed public transport service improvements have been pushed out by a number of years.
Even worse is the fact that the Canterbury Regional Transport Committee agreed at its 30 May 2024 meeting to move “Greater Christchurch Mass Rapid Transit implementation costs of approximately $800m to outside of the 2024-34 programme4.” As regional land transport programmes have a 10-year time span, this effectively shoves mass transit for Christchurch into never never land. According to Environment Canterbury staff, this change was not considered significant. Go figure!
And Christchurch doesn’t even feature strongly in the likely next generation of the so-called Roads of National Significance (RONS), which I prefer to think of as the Roads of National Party Significance (RONPS). Woodend gets a bypass to get the good residents of Pegasus and Ravenswood to the back of the traffic queue on Cranford Street faster. There is no mention of Mass Rapid Transit for Christchurch in any new government programme. And that’s about it. Of the big cities in Aotearoa, the one that needs the most public transport investment looks like being left in the lurch just when it needs help the most.
Go Southerner, Get there fresher (back in the day)
The biggest missing gap in Aotearoa’s limited network of (largely tourist-oriented) long-distance passenger trains is the Main South Line south of Christchurch. The demise of the Southerner train in 2002 left the South Island south of Christchurch without any long-distance train services. This train used to run daily in both directions between Christchurch, Dunedin and Invercargill. Before the demise of the Southerner, Invercargill was the southernmost in-service railway station in the world.
Across the Canterbury Plains between Christchurch and Timaru, the Southerner timetable was time-competitive with road travel at any time and significantly faster at peak times. And that competitive advantage is only going to get better with time.
The Future is Rail’s public meetings in the Lower South Island showed fond memories and a strong desire to bring back the Southerner train but sadly, in the current national political context, this looks like a very long shot, given that the decision to not have rail enabled Cook Strait ferries threatens the viability of the entire South Island rail network. But its return would help complete the backbone of a national passenger rail network.
Meanwhile, down in the Lower South
Further south, both Dunedin and Queenstown have ambitious programmes to improve their public transport networks, both of which are just about through the business case process and moving into funding approvals. Both centres are well ahead of their pre-pandemic patronage levels and have both implemented smart, tactically-focused, incremental service improvements while planning for bigger longer-term changes. Low flat fares have also been a key driver of patronage.
Queenstown also had significant funding committed to public transport infrastructure improvements funded through the NZ Upgrade Programme of the previous government. According to Waka Kotahi, The $115 million Queenstown Package would have provided dedicated public transport infrastructure. This included:
bus priority measures on State Highway 6/State Highway 6A
bus lanes on SH6 south towards Jacks Point and east towards Lake Hayes Estate
improvements to the existing Frankton bus hub
improvements to the SH6A/SH6 intersection (locally known as the BP Roundabout)
pedestrian access improvements across SH6 and SH6A
and a new roundabout at Howards Drive5.
The cost of this project has since exploded to $250 million and its scope significantly reduced to converting the BP Roundabout to traffic signals, signalising the Joe O’Connell Drive intersection, building the Howards Drive roundabout and minor improvements to the Frankton Bus Interchange6.
But even the minor bus infrastructure improvements are only useful if they are accompanied by bus services that provide simple, frequent, connective and prioritised service. This is especially the case given that public transport patronage in Queenstown in surging with March 2024 patronage up a whopping 216% over the same month in 2022. Annual patronage is close to 2 million trips, up from 600,000 in 2017, the last year before the implementation of Queenstown’s new bus network.
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So, given surging patronage and capacity constraints on the existing network, it’s essential that bus service improvements take place as soon as possible. To this end, the Queenstown Public Transport Business Case, proposing significant bus and ferry network improvements, has been endorsed by Otago Regional Council and Waka Kotahi and was presented to Queenstown Lakes District Council on 6 June 2024.
Dunedin
In Dunedin, bus patronage is also surging and is well ahead of pre-pandemic levels.
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As in Queenstown, there is a business case that proposes major improvements to Dunedin’s bus network. The Dunedin Fares and Frequency Single Stage Business Case proposes the following key elements7:
Primary services – 15-minute daytime frequency to be extended to weekends.
Secondary services – 15-minute peak frequency on weekdays and 30 minutes at all other times.
A 50-cent standard adult BeeCard fare.
Both Queenstown and Dunedin have great plans for significantly improved public transport. All it needs now is for the government to come to the party with funding and then get on with implementing these great networks. We will only know around September 2024, with the release of the National Land Transport Programme, whether national funding is made available to support much-needed service programmes in both centres.
Better News in the Top of the South
Nelson Tasman had the good fortune to get its new public transport network funded and implemented in advance of the general election in October 2023.
This network features:
A new fleet of largely battery-electric buses
Significant frequency improvements every day of the week
New service to Nelson Airport
New regional service to towns such as Motueka and Wakefield
This network has been extremely successful at attracting patronage to public transport. In its first month of operation in August 2023, patronage increased by 68 per cent over the previous network with close to 3,000 journeys on the Motueka route alone across the month6. Prior to the new network, Motueka had no conventional public transport service.
Built it and they will come
The key message from the Nelson Tasman new network is “build it and they will come.” People will use public transport when it is simple, frequent, connective and affordable. The South Island has been under-served and under-invested in public transport for a long time. It’s high time for the South Island to get the public transport investment it deserves.
Interisland rail ferries: Regulation is the problem behind the high cost, Richard Prebble, NZ Herald, 20 December 2023
Uncertainty surrounds $78 million for Christchurch Bus Improvements, Oliver Lewis, Business Desk, 22 December 2023
Funding boost for Greater Christchurch Public Transport Futures, Greater Christchurch Partnership, undated.
Canterbury Regional Transport Committee agenda, 30 May 2024, page 39
NZ Upgrade Queenstown Programme, Waka Kotahi, accessed on 26 December 2023
Construction Starts on Queenstown Road Upgrade, NZ Government media release, 4 April 2024
Dunedin Fares and Frequency Business Case, Public and Active Transport Committee, Otago Regional Council, 9 October 2023.
Nicola Willis jumped the gun by cancelling the Interislander ferry build order before determining what caused the budget blowout. In my analysis the problem was with over-spec'd ports. The larger rail enabled ships were fine.
https://t.co/KBw3o2JUxm
Christchurch really got the short end of the stick with transport funding. I'm surprised this hasn't generated more complaints in the media.
Strong public transport in Christchurch is a stepping stone to stronger public transport in the rest of the South Island, as it would increase demand for non-car connecting services to other cities.