Yet another (not unexpected) fossil-fuel supply crunch is here. It will continue to affect everything in our economy. And be painful. But it should also, at last, shift discussion and action much more strongly towards reducing our structural dependency on fossil fuels where we can.
This time it’s different
These shocks have occurred in the past – they are inherent to the system – but this time is different in significant ways.
Even if we can escape an interruption of supply (which is by no means certain), it seems likely that a structural repricing is already underway, especially for diesel.
That means significant cost increases in the foreseeable future for diesel-dependent systems like road and rail freight, and also for any Public Transport (PT) systems that have been slow to convert to homegrown electrons.
One huge difference this time is that we have new technologies to lessen this dependence in key areas. And these are competitively priced, especially now we can all understand the risk and uncertainty of the current model. I’m talking about renewables for generation, batteries for storage, and electrification of our transport systems and vehicles.
It’s not just the price that’s competitive, but the value, because electrification has so many co-benefits. Any plan to reduce diesel dependency is identical to a carbon reduction plan, which also happens to be a plan to reduce other harmful emissions and damaging noise, and thus a plan for greater quality of life in general, especially in our cities.
This fact is elegantly outlined here, I strongly recommend reading this, in fact I deleted paragraphs of this draft post as Ember says it so much better and more authoritatively:
From The New Twin Fossil Shock, 14 April 2026, a good read at Ember
The electrifying potential
Cities and countries that have been taking action to reduce their climate-changing transport systems are wisely out ahead of the current disarray. So that’s what we’ll look at here.
Public transport, plus cycling and other light personal travel modes, will play a critical role in reducing fuel consumption while enabling continuation of business and maintenance of public wellbeing.
Across the country, you can already see a rise in ridership showing up in the data, without the benefit of any preemptive action by authorities. Here’s how the recent uptick looks for Auckland:
However the return of work-from-home has the potential to reduce this. I think it is important to note that this is not a pandemic, commercial, educational, and social connection remains as valuable as before. It would be good to see a government campaign urging the use of alternatives over hiding in your bedroom for this crisis.
There even could be some interesting outcomes if the crisis deepens, places well connected by PT, like city centres could even boom? Perhaps at the expense of the more auto-dependent malls?
Of course, there is always a risk of a negative feedback loop in a full-blown supply emergency: given PT systems operate on diesel, if more services are desired, more fuel will be required.
We will have to cross that bridge when we come to it, but it raises the question: how are we going with de-dieseling public transport? How does the near future look? How free, overall, are our public transport networks from disruptions to liquid fossil-fuel supply? And how are we going at reducing carbon and other emissions?
First, the good news
Both of the country’s urban rail systems (Auckland and Wellington) are fully electrified, and a number of smaller provincial towns have recently converted their entire bus fleets to battery-electric operation, which has them feeling pretty good right now.
Two diesel-free systems: Wellington’s electric Matangi passing the nearly complete Te Ara Tupua walking/ biking path. Photo: Patrick Reynolds, January 2026
I approached Auckland Transport for some local data on this, and they were especially helpful. We’ll get to that data soon, but first check out this chart showing the electrification of the national bus fleet, made by Ben Taylor (via Bluesky).
Going by the numbers, currently just over a quarter of the country’s PT bus fleet (777 out of a total 2844) is electric. But the even bigger point about this chart is the direction of travel. That wiggly hockey-stick line is the tell-tale signifier of disruption, in this case the good kind of disruption.
And this is a result of conscious policy choices. Note how the line bends up from 2021? In January 2021, the previous Labour-led government made good on an election pledge and mandated that all new buses for PT must be 100% emission-free from 2025, with transition of whole fleets to be complete by 2035.
Incidentally, this one of the few climate and energy transition regulations that hasn’t been actively reversed by the current government. Possibly because no supplier now offers diesel buses in New Zealand – thus showing the power of technology change supported by regulation.
An example of the positive impact can be seen in Nelson, where Mayor Nick Smith is rightly proud of his city’s transition to electric buses and the resulting doubling of ridership. In the post below from 31 March, he extols the benefits to health, wellbeing, and resilience, and estimated annual savings of $600,000 in diesel costs avoided.
Nick Smith, Mayor of Nelson, Facebook post 31 March 2026.
And a more recent post from 6 April reports ridership continuing to grow:
Nick Smith, Mayor of Nelson, Facebook post 6 April 2026.
As far as I can find out, public transport fleets are now 100% electric in Nelson, Invercargill, Mosgiel and Palmerston North, and soon Timaru – and ridership is growing with them.
Other cities are catching up:
- In Otago, by October this year 77% of 106 buses will be electric, heading to 100% by 2028.
- Christchurch has 71 e-buses out of 310 (~23% of the fleet), aiming for full transition by 2035.
- Wellington, with the second biggest bus fleet in the country, reports 119 electric buses out of 482 – that’s around 25% – and is aiming for 100% by 2030.
- Waikato, with a fleet of 111, has I believe 2 e-buses, and plans to fully transition by 2035.
- Bay of Plenty has a fleet of 202, but no information on electrification on their website.
However in much of the country these wins are dwarfed by the decades of underfunding which means services are often absent, however they might be fuelled. Good to see that getting some attention here.
Intercity
The situation is even worse between cities, because of a massive funding gap in our PT provision system, which only funds services across regional boundaries by exception. Witness the absolute charade Te Huia has to pass through to get a normal amount of subsidy and unlock its economic benefits.
(Ed: And dare we even mention the InterIslander ferries, which are becoming an international reputational issue as well as a bugbear for New Zealanders just trying to get from one island to the other?)
With both flying and driving getting more difficult and expensive, it is time the inter-regional public transport anomaly gets fixed, and the best way to do that is to normalise public funding mechanisms. There’s a good campaign on this by The Future Is Rail.
Which brings us to…
Auckland: a big bus opportunity…
With around 1350 buses in the fleet, and growing, this is the big dog to transition.
Currently about 25% of the Auckland fleet is electric, with more e-buses on their way, raising the proportion to 33% by August this year, and by July 2027 we will get to 44%.
The Auckland fleet is a lumpy one to change, because the vehicles are renewed when contracts are renewed, enabling new depots to be electrified supporting additional routes.
…and a ferry predicament
Ferries are the real problem child in Auckland’s PT system, as they truly neck down the stinky stuff, especially in proportion to the number of passengers they carry.
On some routes, diesel consumption is as high as 4 litres per passenger, with one outlier at a thirsty 12l/pax. (I haven’t seen figures for Waiheke as it is not within the city’s public transport system, maddeningly).
It is fair to say that the more gas-guzzling services will be the first to be paused if the diesel supply crunch gets worse – although not the key Devonport route.
(There are also some low-ridership buses that consume over 3l/pax, and these may also come under the microscope if supply is seriously affected.)
Some good news is that two fully electric and two hybrid ferries are about to enter service, which shows the wisdom of our city investing to address climate and other concerns.
However: AT has also just ordered four brand new 100% diesel ferries. Why? Because the current government refused to co-fund these vessels if AT specified any other propulsion technology. Which is as incomprehensible as it depressing.
Auckland is a harbour city, we need to be using our blue highway, but that just won’t work if we are forced to use increasingly expensive, toxic, and outdated technologies. It just blows up the operating costs, and makes most services unviable. Stick that in your rates cap and smoke it.
How much diesel have we already avoided?
I asked AT if they could provide figures on the amount of diesel already avoided through fleet electrification, and they kindly sent me the chart below.
It is quite complex, and it would be good to get the raw data as I think it could made more legible.
Anyway, the key bars are the top two. These show the quantity of diesel (in millions of litres) that was not burnt in the public transport sector in Auckland since the electrification of the rail system and the introduction of e-buses.
The bus system has grown throughout this period, first with somewhat more efficient buses, and now through 100% battery-electric systems. So the orange bar (diesel, bus, avoided) will grow, gradually eating the navy blue one (diesel, bus, actual), until it is eventually replaced.
The four new electric/hybrid ferries will make a small dent in the purple bar (diesel, ferry, actual) – but unless there are significant policy changes on the water, diesel consumption won’t change much.
It would be interesting to do another version of this chart showing the number of passengers, or even better, passenger kilometres. As the rail system recovers from the rebuild disruption and CRL ridership growth kicks in, we can expect the blue bar (diesel, train, avoided) to grow consistently, especially by the per-passenger metric.
Remember too, the cycleways are playing their part in replacing fuel-powered driving journeys – and also, in relieving public transport at peak times especially.
This is the stealth mode, which AT should be making more of a joyful noise about at every opportunity.
The latest city-wide cycle counter data available from AT is February, so we can’t graph the March impacts yet (to match the observed activity). But here’s the city centre cordon bike count, to the end of February 2026. The return to form after early COVID interruptions is pretty clear.
City centre cordon cycle counts to February 2026: spot the recovery, and the trend.
The NW cycleway, Auckland’s busiest weekday bike route, running alongside SH16 towards Te Atatū, around 5.50pm on Thursday 9 April. The new normal. Image: Jolisa Gracewood.
The point of this post is to pull together some numbers about the energy transition in public transport, and to get those numbers out there, so we can all see the value of prudent investment in change.
It increasingly seems that the very broadness of the benefits of electrification somehow makes it harder for traditional evaluation models to confirm the case for change.
It is so obvious that we should invest in public goods that have an abundance of convergent benefits. Such bang for buck! Of course!
And yet our legacy systems – ye olde business cases and predictive models – seem almost designed to discount these incredibly effective policies.
Still, at least we can all finally see how vulnerable to disruption these complex and distant supply chains are. And one of the key benefits of electrifying transport – independence from that system – is surely front of mind, now and forever.
From The New Twin Fossil Shock, 14 April 2026, a good read at Ember
For the avoidance of doubt, perhaps from now on we should preface all references to fossil-fuels with the word “intermittent”, as a reminder of fragile that system always was. And to remind us we can free ourselves, and our future, from those worries.
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In other words, the invisible fist of the free market is addressing the problems that are simply too hard for NZ’s legion of overpaid civil servants, quango abbetters and committee sitters.
How efficient and responsive – if only we had privatised more of the economy 🙁
I’m sorry? You appear to have the wrong end of the stick. Did you read the post? No invisible hands.
Only highly visible ones, policy, regulation, and good governance is the ONLY route by which we have any electrified PT and cycleways.
Do you understand what the word “public”, in public transport means?
All transport modes are very visibly supported by public regulation and funding, especially private vehicle use.
*Primarily private vehicle use
I think DS was being sarcastic…….surely.
Oh yes. In which case my apologies for the ‘splaining.
Excellent post as usual, Patrick.
One missing element in your discussion is the potential for pooling to make a difference. Especially EV pooling.
Think of a car as a small bus. Those small (car) bus journeys require much lower occupancy to be viable. So they can be effective to less concentrated destinations, that traditional PT can never afford to serve (noting your high diesel per passenger rates for such routes).
Resilience could be boosted by a national pooling strategy.
Now is the time.
Not missing. This post is about public and active transport.
Car Share, Ride Hail, EVs, and car pooling (that great white whale of private transport) are all off topic.
Also we have about 50 years of evidence that people just don’t want to car pool
Off topic, but…. Unfortunately, Aucklanders don’t have friends, so they sit alone in their cars half the morning. When I had to drive to an inconvenient workplace, I picked up two or three others to drive (via Onewa Rd) to drop them in the City before carrying onwards. Such a strange thing to do.
Of course, we all use the bus now.
Does it really frustrate anyone else that we had a government championing light rail that never got it underway and now we have another 1970s style (did the CIA backed Iranian revolution have anything to do with that one?). Persia is the problem. Not the Persians, but the geographical location of the most oil wealthy parts of the globe is still the reason for ongoing conflicts.
But why could we not have at least surface light railed Onehunga to the Airport? To help people in Maangere? Or started on South Roskill, to help people in South Roskill. Or Te Atatu, to help people in Te Atatu?
We have mucked around since the 1970s and nobody ever learned a single lesson.
Not to forget that we ripped up all our light rail in the 1940s.
I was born in 1982, it was illegal to be gay.
It is 2026, Destiny Church has for decades made slurs against the rainbow community but still operates as a legitimate charity, and political party.
How stupid are we?
Now Simplicity Living is taking over what OCKHAM has been attempting to do, and this is really good. But we need more OCKHAMS., and more SIMPLICITY LIVINGS. And more light rail (all powered by the sun / wind / mighty river powers that the neo liberals love to profit from.
As midnight oil sang: IT BELONGS TO THEM, LET”S GIVE IT BACK
bah humbug
Thanks Patrick – most interesting. Diesel ferry only government funding !
Hello, im new zealand and am a diesel addict.
Please dont link to nzherald “premium” articles, keep paywalls out of the public discourse. New Zealands “Paper of Record” locking away our past papers has consequences enough.
(Many newspapers are now blocking the internet archives, and wayback machines, so our history may soon get even harder to retrieve and even more forgotten)
I hear you, but it’s important to show sources for this sort work.
Plus there are various archive sites that offer access (also, local libraries often have the physical newspaper).
That aside, what a great title for this post! Love it.
Need to face the fact, this conflict in the Middle East is going to have medium to possible long term implications to global geopolitics, economics, trade and supply chains affecting social and economic life in New Zealand.
New Zealand as a long and narrow country, is blessed with the following:
– A national rail network currently connecting 14 of the 16 regions with a potential catchment of 85% of the country’s population allowing for frequent regional and inter-regional ‘tap’ and travel electric/battery passenger train services
– 13 regional Public Transport Authorities operating existing public transport metro, intra/inter-regional bus, passenger rail and local metro ferry services
– Amending the Land Transport Management Act in 2023 allowing the 13 regional Public Transport Authorities to work together on inter-regional public transport project’s
– The rollout of the national contactless ‘tap & travel’ payment system – Motu Move
These components allows for the creation of an integrated national ‘tap’ and travel bus, passenger rail and local ferry (excluding Cook Strait ferry services) public transport network from Kaitaia to Bluff and most communities in-between.
To achieve this, New Zealand needs to have a national public transport strategy and a dedicated National Public Transport Development and Funding Agency, to develop national public transport planning, development and funding policies, either as a separate entity in New Zealand Transport Agency or as a ‘not for profit’ state entity under New Zealand’s Ministry of Transport.
The Agency would establish national operating guidelines and procedures, develop, fund and help in the procurement of public transport services using existing or new public transport assets, in partnership with the 13 regional Public Transport Authorities, using their respective Regional Land Transport Plan’s and their own or outsourced transport service providers.
So lets make New Zealand into one big urban metro ‘tap’ and travel public transport system.
Thanks Patrick, one question i would like answered is why we seem to be stuck in this paradigm of PT equals heavy transport. What are the ecomomics of replacing “buses” with smaller lighter more affordable evs (like vans) especially on those more expensive less well used routes. As uptake increases scale the number of vans rather than the size of the vehicle.ie. demand responsive. Quite depressing seeing an empty bus belching diesel fumes on a PT route where demand does not meet the scale of or cost of the vehicle operating. Same could apply to ferrys. Smaller more often more responsive to demand. We need to be thinking outside the square and beyond inherited paradigms.
During peak, those busses might be full.
We need off-peak busses (early, late, mid-day) to enable trips. If I can take PT 9 out of 10 times, this will become my default choice. If I cannot get home if I need to change my schedule on a short notice, driving will become my default choice. Therefore, the (often less used) late evening busses are really important.
Drivers are expensive to pay and hard to come by (2022 anyone)? Therefore, there is limited capacity to just scale a route by adding more small vans.
“What are the ecomomics of replacing “buses” with smaller lighter more affordable evs (like vans) especially on those more expensive less well used routes?”
Generally terrible. Running the buses you need for the peaks emptier in the off peak is way way better than having another whole fleet of smaller vehicles as well. Also the cost is mostly in the driver, regardless of the size of the vehicle.
The economics of a route evens out all day. The super full buses at the peaks cross-subsidise the quieter ones. Any attempts to only run “profitable” buses kills the network effects that build ridership and better value for money (this is how PT networks outside of London were killed in the UK).
Also you may be surprised how few uses are need to cover running costs per bus, from memory it’s 6, across the whole trip, and you aren’t observing the whole journey.
By far the better strategy than trying to shrink vehicles is to make the service more useful (quicker, nicer, safer, cheaper etc) so more people use it more often. Though some routes are feeder “coverage” routes and may always require cross-subsidy.
In the end too- “if it doesn’t scale, it doesn’t matter” (Jarrett Walker). Little PT vehicles are sign of failure. Any city should want frequent big busy PT vehicles on a great network.
The vehicles you should worry about that are oversized and have terrible occupancy rates (20%!) are our mostly single occupant double-cab utes and SUVs…
I wonder if Ant Vile is also referring to “non routes” -we have plenty of suburbs that currently have poor PT provision ( for example a 900m walk in Te Atatū Peninsula to the nearest bus stop may well be far enough to prevent some from taking a bus) Could smaller sized “mini buses” offer a more localised trip? I grew up with the Red Rose Rambler minibuses in Lancashire that acted as real local connectors outside the main routes.
Which ferry route is using 12/l per passenger? That is like $40 of fuel per person, per trip. Must be a chunky subsidy for that run.
Chris Bishop being forced to flannel to answer Julie-Anne Genter didn’t look pretty.
‘Wait for the next GPS’ – after the election when it doesn’t hurt votes?
‘PT projects didn’t meet economic evaluation’ – and RoNS do?
Someone needs to get out of the diesel waka.
Accept the oil problem exists now and won’t go away and start reframing transport right now.
Can’t afford to fill up the car, on God we bussin