Some rather unfortunate news coming out of Hamilton today suggests that it’s now unlikely we’ll see a Hamilton to Auckland rail service proceed – at least for now:
Hamilton City Council remains supportive of a commuter rail service between the city and Auckland, but believes the time is not right to fund it.
Council today voted 7-4 in principle to support the proposed service, but will not commit finances to it.
The project to provide supporting rail infrastructure will be identified as an unfunded project in the draft 10-Year Plan. The public will then be able to give feedback on the proposed service as part of the consultation process.
Funds previously collected, totalling $256,000, have been retained in a specific reserve for passenger rail infrastructure if the project is pursued.
Chris Allen, General Manager City Infrastructure, said there had been considerable dialogue among stakeholders – including representatives from several other Waikato Councils who are part of the Rail Working Party – about the proposed service, which if advanced at a later date could also be subject to New Zealand Transport Authority subsidy.
Mr Allen said: “With its decision today Council has indicated to staff that with its current fiscal challenges, allocating substantial funding to this project would not be appropriate.”
There has been a lot in the news lately about Hamilton City Council’s financial problems, particularly relating to the legacy costs of hosting the V8 Supercar races there – and I imagine those issues have quite a lot to do with the Council’s decision to not approve funding for the rail service for now. I also think that the inability for the service to find a slot at Britomart, with many ‘work arounds’ being looked at which never quite seemed to be what we were after, played against the service happening. The Hamilton Councillors, quite justifiably in some respects I suppose, just weren’t willing to take the financial risk in tough times.
I tend to think there’s no reason why a Hamilton to Auckland rail service couldn’t be successful. After all the ‘Capital Connection’ train between Wellington and Palmerston North manages to survive – even though it connects two far smaller cities. A critical difference seems to be that KiwiRail runs the Capital Connection and therefore has an incentive to keep its operating costs down – whereas the proposed operating costs for the Waikato service were, by comparison, extremely high.
Perhaps post-electrification we might have a better chance at making the service work. With all Pukekohe trains becoming shuttles to Papakura, a Hamilton train that stops at Pukekohe and then runs express to Britomart could be quite popular with commuters (thereby helping to support the Waikato train in a similar way to how Kapiti Coast passengers help support the Capital Connection). To be sure of success though (and a failed service would be worse than not getting it up and running in the first place) I think four factors need to be present:
- Trip time needs to be under two hours each way. Asking people to spend more than four hours a day commuting seems too much.
- The service needs to begin and end at Britomart – forcing a transfer for Strand Station or Newmarket once again seems a bit too much for people to bother with the train.
- The service needs to stop at Pukekohe (and obviously places further south) so that Pukekohe passengers can help boost the service’s financial viability.
- A ‘reverse commute’ service needs to be included, allowing for trips from Auckland to Hamilton just after the AM peak and back from Hamilton just before the PM peak.
If we can get all four of these factors in place, then I am reasonably confident that the service could be a success. Until such a time, if we’re honest I think we can probably agree there are more pressing transport priorities – although it’s still a bit sad as so much hard work has gone into trying to make this work and it really ‘feels’ like it should make sense for there to be an intercity commuter rail service between Auckland and Hamilton.
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I think that to succeed, any Auckland-Hamilton train would need to be substantially quicker than taking the coach, and ideally faster than driving. Anyone who can afford to pay $24 (or whatever the proposed fare was) each way can afford to drive. So if the train trip is slower, why would anyone use the service?
Also, I’m not sure why we would want to encourage people to commute from Hamilton to Auckland. Aren’t we supposed to be moving towards a compact city?
The silver fern too the AB’s japan game during the wold cup was sold out at a ticket price of $90 return :).
But I must agree the odds were stacking against the regular service. The slow speed combined with the lack of a Britomart slot would cost it patronige.
Hopefully in a few years the economy will be picking up and a third NIMT line will have been built the service will get another shot. I think some QR style 160km/h tilting trains would be a game-changer.
“a third NIMT line will have been built the service will get another shot. I think some QR style 160km/h tilting trains would be a game-changer.”
If you’re building a 3rd line, why limit it to low speed trains? Some 550km/h TGV trains would be a real game changer 🙂
$24 seems pretty reasonable and cheaper than driving. Typically driving is priced at over $0.50 per km so you’d need 3 people in the car to make it cheaper to drive. Current bus services are about $20 and well patronised, taking about 2 hours when the roads arent congested with stops at Manukau, Papakura, Bombay, Huntly and Ngaruawahia.
“I’m not sure why we would want to encourage people to commute from Hamilton to Auckland”
Awkward question…best not answered.
It’s about 140km from Auckland to Hamilton, about 90km from Pukekohe to Hamilton.
It’s pretty flat and there are some good straight sections.
What is the average max speed?
The train should be faster 2 hours.
agreed there were many problems with the proposal, too slow, terminating a strand is joke.
Will be very difficult having a express service when trains are running every 10mins though.
Really like the idea of the service, but difficult to fit a quality express train in to a high frequency suburban network with only double tracks.
Best thing to do in the short term is having a big billboard at the northbound turnoff to Papakura advertising the train to Auckland, and then good signage at every intersection to the station.
In the medium term a Park and Ride at Drury would be good, much closer to highway. Better for people in Paerata and Bombay, lots of lifestlye blocks around there.
The reverse commute can currently kind of be provided by the Overlander, except it costs $48 one way.
And the Overlander at the other end of the island provides the reverse commute for the Capital Connection, except for the same unrealistic pricing.
After Auckland is electrified then the only gaps on the NIMT for full Auckland-Wellington electrification will be Pukekohe to Hamilton and Palmerston North to Waikanae. (Apart from incompatible electrical specs???)
Then couldn’t the Overlander, the Capital Connection and the Waikato Express be combined running some of those 160km/hr tilt trains or something similar? (I know it would hardly get up to 160km/hr with all the curves) And suddenly you’ve got 3 or 5 trains each day on a better than 6 hour service, and then there is an imperative to improve bits of the NIMT to get the speed up.
I think that would be the ideal situation that should happen eventually. Faster trains that can run 150-160 km/h which would bring the trip down to 90 minutes or less. I think it would be popular to, you could probably run a service every hour or two. In the long term you could even run it via the proposed Airport line to cater for people from Hamilton travelling overseas. Dreams are free!
I think the Wellington suburban rail system is 1500V DC and the Palmerston to Hamilton is 25kV AC, as well as the coming Auckland suburban at 25kV AC.
Not sure how easily you can change either of then, or change the specs on the trains.
Overseas, they have train units capable of switching between electricity sources.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-system_%28rail%29
The Eurostar trainsets, for example, can run on 750V DC third rail, 1500 and 3000V DC overhead, and 25kV AC overhead. It also has a service speed of 300km/h. Unfortunately for us, it’s suited to standard-gauge rails with corners of a radius of 4km 🙁
Perhaps places do this already but technically you could energize sections of the catenary to different voltages to match the train’s voltage traveling underneath them.
I think the electric power issue is irrelevant. Diesel trains, such as the Class 43 used in the UK between London and Bristol eg. are capable of a sufficiently fast speed (200km/h) and would be just as suitable for NZ. Then they could also be used on the AKL-HAM-Tauranga or Rotorua(if restablished) lines. The problems really come down to maintaining the rail lines for those speeds and ofcourse our numerous level-crossings!
The SNCF Bombardier 82500 E/DMU would be ideal for the North Island, these can run under 1500vDC, 25kvAC or under their own diesel power. A cheaper option that runs on just AC and diesel would probably be fine too, as the approach to Wellington is relatively short and is entirely diesel capable. These aren’t cape gauge but probably could be built that way.
Not sure about tilting trains myself, I recently went on five different examples across Europe and four of those made me and my companions quite nauseous the whole time (and I usually don’t get any kind of motion sickness). The only one that didn’t was the St Petersburg-Helsinki route which was an almost entirely new line. To me that suggests that tilt trains on existing track aren’t very good for passenger comfort. Probably better to get a ‘normal’ train that can cruise at 120km/h or so and focus more on improving the track to allow those sorts of speeds to be maintained.
“New study shows how to eliminate motion sickness on tilting trains”
http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-08-motion-sickness-tilting.html
Cool article Scott… I’ve been very sick on the Virgin pendolinos in England and hope they are taking notice of this.
Just FYI, the Capital Connection is again under threat from it’s own company. People are now taking the unit from Waikanae instead of the CC, so passenger numbers are dropping, thereby not making it an economically viable option.