The state of the rails across Aotearoa

Third Main Track

The section of the North Island Main Trunk between Westfield and Wiri Junctions is one of the busiest sections of track on the national rail network with 380 freight services and 1,500 passenger services travelling through the area each week. The addition of a third main track will enable separation of slower freight trains from faster suburban services and potentially enable train paths for express and regional trains. This has required the upgrading of Middlemore Station as well as 11 kilometres of new track. Part of this project from Westfield to just north of Middlemore Station was completed with the rail electrification project in 2015. But the section from Middlemore Station to Puhinui Station and Wiri Junction is now in the final stages of testing and commissioning.

Pukekohe Electrification and Southern Stations

The 18 kilometre extension of the Auckland electrified network was completed on 3 February 2025 with electric services running now every 10 minutes in peak, every 20 minutes during the day every day of the week and every 30 minutes late evening to Waitematā/ Britomart Station in Auckland city centre.

In conjunction with this, three new stations – Drury, Ngākōroa and Paerātā – are being constructed in the fast-growing southern growth area of Auckland. Two of these stations – Drury and Paerātā – are in construction now with Ngākōroa to follow.

While it’s great that there are new train stations, they appeared to have been value engineered – or as I like to call it “engineering the value out” – to within an inch of their lives. No artist’s impression can disguise the fact that there is virtually no passenger shelter provided, apart from a couple of glorified bus shelters, in a city known for its significant pluviality (i.e. it rains a lot). One would hope for better for three stations whose cost is pocket change from half a billion dollars.

The Mighty Waikato

Te Huia

After delays due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Te Huia launched in April 2021 with two weekday return services between Hamilton, Rotokauri, Huntly and Papakura – and one return service on a Saturday.

Over the past four years, various improvements to Te Huia services have been made including:

• Extension of the service to The Strand in central Auckland.
• Additional station stop at Puhinui (with onward connections to Auckland Airport).
• Additional daily return service on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays from February 2024.
• Additional stop at the upgraded Pukekohe station from February 2025 (with simultaneous removal of Papakura stop), resulting in faster overall trip time of up to 15 minutes.

Te Huia passenger numbers are steadily increasing, and passenger satisfaction is very high.

I am not one to lavish praise liberally but the Waikato region deserves huge kudos for its more than decade-long strong support, backed up with cold hard cash, for reviving passenger rail in the form of Te Huia between Kirikiriroa/ Hamilton and Tāmaki Makaurau/ Auckland.

I just wish that Tāmaki Makaurau/ Auckland would return the favour to the Waikato and actually commit some cold hard cash to support Te Huia, given that it delivers people to Auckland who spend money there and 22 per cent of Te Huia’s customers are Aucklanders.

Given that Auckland managed to find $2.75 billion from behind the sofa cushions to fund its half share of City Rail Link, I am sure another rummage is in order for the modest sum to support Te Huia to be able to provide a Sunday and public holiday service. This would mean that Aotearoa/ New Zealand would then have a single inter-regional rail service that runs every day. Which doesn’t seem like an overly ambitious ask.

The Wairarapa

If the Waikato deserves rail kudos, so do the long-suffering Wairarapa Line passengers who seem to have been presented with a shopping list of everything that could possibly go wrong with a rail line. At its nadir, the Wairarapa Line was achieving a punctuality rate of 5%. That is, 19 out of 20 trains were running late whereas a more acceptable punctuality rate is 19 out of 20 trains running on time.

The latest drama revolves around a lack of specially trained managers for the peculiarities of the Wairarapa Line operation, including the Remutaka Tunnel, leading to regularly planned bus replacements of more lightly patronised services.

According to Wikipedia As a health and safety measure, staff on trains travelling through the 9km diesel-operated tunnel carry gas detectors to detect the build-up of noxious gases. In the rare event of unsafe levels of gas being detected, trains are cancelled and replaced by buses. As well, fire suppression equipment is required.

The line is going through a $350 million upgrade including such modern innovations as actually having signals (rather than track warrants) between Featherston and Masterton, as well as passing loops and track upgrades to support faster and more frequent train services.

This is supported by crown investment of $802.9 million into the Wairarapa and Manawatū rail lines including:

• A fleet of 18 4-car units, totalling 72 cars.
• Doubling of peak services on both lines and additional off-peak services.
• 15-minute travel time savings for Kiwis commuting between Wellington and Masterton.
• Increased speeds on the Wairarapa line from 90 kilometres per hour to 110 kilometres per hour. These are due to come into service on the Wairarapa and Manawatū lines in 2029 and 2030.

The Manawatū

Over in the Manawatū, Horizons and Greater Wellington regional councils are being asked by Waka Kotahi/ NZ Transport Agency to pony up a larger share of the funding for the operation of the single weekday return commuter train from Te Papaioea/ Palmerston North to Te Whanganui-a-Tara/ Wellington.

On of the face of it, there is some justification for this. But this ignores the fact that Kiwirail operates the Capital Connection with a lack of transparency when compared to its publicly reported operation of Waikato’s Te Huia service.

This New Zealand Herald piece from 2024 sheds more light on this.

Annual commuting on monthly passes on the Capital Connection comes in at an eye watering $11,436 a year for a train that runs once a day in each direction on the 250 or so working days of the year.

Generally funding involves a degree of control, management and oversight. As far as I can ascertain, given scant publicly available information, this does not seem to be currently the case for the Capital Connection.

Te Wai Pounamu/ South Island

17 May 2025 saw the first day of a four day revival of a truncated Southerner train between Ōtautahi/ Christchurch and Ōtepoti/ Dunedin. I was on the first train and it was completely full. From what I understand and saw, the passengers were largely older kiwis who had previously used the Southerner when it operated daily between Waihopai/ Invercargill and Ōtautahi/ Christchurch up to 2002.

The fact that these trains sold out in record time shows the level of latent demand for passenger rail in the Lower South Island. And this should be a strong signal to Kiwirail that there is a case for the Southerner to be a regular part of its offerings of largely visitor-oriented, premium-priced scenic rail journeys.

While Kiwirail’s Great Journeys New Zealand trains provide a very high quality visitor experience, they are not public transport which is about affordably connecting people and communities across the motu. We need great visitor experiences but we also need great public transport within and between our towns, cities and regions across the motu. And now more than ever with sky high domestic air fares where a flight from Christchurch to Dunedin can cost up to $470.

In other green shoots from the Lower South Island, the government is backing the proposed Mosgiel inland freight port with an $8.2 million loan for improvements on the rail link to Port Chalmers.

Final thoughts

The fact that Aotearoa’s South Island only gets a passing mention in this piece is sad testament to the lack of attention it gets from central government. We deliberately placed our nation’s capital in the middle of the country so that governments would look both north and south. The North Island is literally powered by the South Island’s electricity and the South Island is the lynchpin of Aotearoa’s vital tourism economy. It deserves better from us than scant attention in public transport and many other things.

Budget 2025, due to be handed down in a few days from time of writing, will be interesting to watch. It has already been signalled that the Rail Network Investment Plan will need to be updated with announcements from Budget 2025. What this will be will likely only be revealed on budget day. So watch out for this.

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