Just some random questions that I have been thinking about:
Why does the NZTA have its Auckland offices effectively directly above Britomart by being in the HSBC building? It is about as far away from the motorways as you can get in the CBD and is right above the best public transport spot in the city.
The same question for the Minstry of Transport who’s Auckland office is on the corner of Queen St and Customs St, again right next to Britomart.
How many NZTA and MOT staff use PT to get to work in Auckland considering they are right next to the best served PT hub in the city.
Why is it that many opponents of things like the CBD tunnel believe that it is a waste of money to support PT services in Auckland yet they love the fact that there is good PT in Wellington and even use it frequently if they are there?
When will Kiwirail release more information about the EMU tender process?
Is the government or ministry of transport getting involved in that tender process?
Will Veolia ever learn to properly communicate with customers?
Often after delays there will be two or three trains that will travel in a ‘convoy’ to the end of the line with only one stopping to pick up passengers and the other trains only a minute or two behind. It has been suggested that this is so that they can claim that the train completed its run (albeit late) and Veolia can get paid its fee for doing so, is anyone at Auckland Transport monitoring this sort of thing?
Will Auckland Transport ever hold Veolia to account for their poor performance?
Will we ever see regular monthly patronage stats again like we did from ARTA?
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“Veolia communicate with customers” – They first need to learn how to communicate internally.
I understand that the rail closures are required, but when they look at the patronage figures do they take these closures into account? I for one, will not take a railbus, I’ll rather drive or not go to town (or wherever).
I have to say, I find it a bit odd that council ratepayers pay for the train service. The only other place I know where this happens is Toronto, where the City of Toronto controls the TTC (and very recently there was talk of uploading the TTC onto the Ontario province for them to shoulder the costs).
Bris, this is not really much than the situation in Australia. The main difference being that New Zealand doesn’t have states.
So instead of state governments paying for the state capital’s trains out of state coffers, it has regional councils that pay for the “regional capital’s” trains out of regional coffers.
how can an organisation called “New Zealand TRANSPORT Agency” be apparently so opposed to all modes of transport except the private car / truck? Surely it must be in breach of some trade description act to call itself that, but be totally against multi-modal transport?
Is this the only country in the world to have such a blinkered, short sighted organisation in control?
oh and another question I’ve raised before…where does Nicky Kaye, MP for Central Auckland, but part of the National Govt, stand on these issues. Having heard her a little, I’m sure she must be very pro PT and rail and CBD rail tunnel, but I’d be interested to know if she actively supports these things, or remains very quiet.
Other questions around Nikki Kaye:
Where the hell has she been?
Why hasn’t she at least been able to make dissenting noises about the complete and abject denial by central government of a very important project for her constituants?
I can definitely say that if I was still living in Auckland Central she wouldn’t be getting my vote this time around. She seems to lack any voice for her area. Anyway this time instead I’ll be living in the Epsom electorate where I’ll be doing my damn hardest to make sure Rortney doesn’t get in again through National party horse trading.
The Trickster – There is a fault in you plan, Epsom people dont vote *Rortney* to get him into government, but rather to give National a collition partner. It’s smart voting, for what they want.
Having announcers who second or third language is English is not acceptable. Here in Switzerland Swiss Rail does not have announcers who can bearly speak French or German making important information announcements.
Veolia needs to employ a group of professional announcers for communication purposes. What will happen in an emergency situation? People in a panic trying to decifer someone with an extremely heavy Indian(or any accent) accent could actually be dangerous.
By the way, where do they get the announcers? Do they just rotate the train staff (I’ve recognised some of the voices). I sometime just shake my head when I hear the announcements, also there is no consistency in the quality of the message.
Perhaps they just choose the person who can apologise the best, lol. They are getting quite good at that.
To be fair, many tourists might not understand announcements made in a very heavy “white Kiwi” accent.
Yea but who do we mainly carry on our public transport? Kiwi’s or tourists, I think we need to focus on getting more kiwi’s on board since they will be the daily users, not one off’s.
Came across an absolutely brilliant site showing how to communicate information about a big project: in this case the proposed Fehmarnbelt tunnel between Denmark (Lolland) and Germany. Not only is it a deeply impressive way of communicating information about the project but it reflects two of the things that are sadly lacking in any of the infrastructure things we do here: good governance and transparency! Worth a look: http://www.femern.com/ Perhaps Auckland Council might think about this sort of arrangement in respect of the CBD rail link: it would certainly show-up NZTA (and AT for that matter) for the outmoded, politicised, anachronistic bodies that they are.
Don’t ask too many questions, you’ll come across as uninformed.
More so.
in latest news Darren Hughes is being replaced by Shane Jones as Labour transport spokesperson. Good to see the feelings expressed here were shared at much higher levels. Lets hope Shane can do a better job at holding Joyce to account.
Personally I would have preferred David Shearer.
Hmmm… very interesting. I met with Darren a few times and found him to be a great guy, and very smart. Though I do think he was often distracted with other matters (being chief whip and shadow leader of the house) to the extent that he didn’t have much time for transport.
heres some good signs from Shane Jones from the herald today:
“He will be fighting for a less extravagant approach to National’s $1.69 billion “holiday highway” from Puhoi to Wellsford, which Jones says seems to be about the minister’s and his colleagues’ property investments around the Mahurangi area. It may be unpopular among Jones’ Northland mates, but then, he is used to rubbing a few people up the wrong way.”
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10704490
I’ve met Darren a few times too and agree he is a great guy, but the consensus from insiders was that transport wasn’t his passion with the exception of local issues.
I would have preferred an Aucklander like Twyford or Shearer as they have made lots of supportive noise in regards to the CBD rail link.
I have a random question
Why not have longer distance passenger trains. Lots of tourists would use them. Fly into Auckland, train to rotorua etc.
http://www.transport.govt.nz/ourwork/rail/newzealandsnationalrailnetwork/
We did have a lot of intercity rail services in NZ, however for a variety of reasons few remain.
look at the links below:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geyserland_Express
And
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaimai_Express
Few tourists used the last intercity service to Rotorua. About 30 a day, if I remember correctly. The last Labour government scrapped the service (or refused to carry on covering the losses, which is essentially the same thing). It’s hard to justify millions of bucks each year in subsidies when there is a perfectly good intercity bus joining the cities.
The government had nothing to do with it, Tranz Scenic was under private ownership at the time.
Unfortunately rail operators about a decade ago were only interested in running the rail network into the ground.
The passenger services were sold to West Coast Rail of Victoria, who unfortunately had very little capital so the services that didn’t make much money were shut down.
Also the network was in a very poor condition so services were slow and suffered frequent delays.
Things have improved a little but currently Kiwirail is very much focussed on freight, and keep telling themselves that only tourists use the trains now, though anyone who has been on the Overlander knows this is false.
Looking forward new carriages are coming this year that will replace the current 75 year old carriages, and improvements to the network for freight will improve journey times and reduce delays.
Various responses:
1. Ratepayer subsidy of local transport is the standard British model, followed (as so often) by NZ;
2. The government had no involvement in the scrapping of the Kaimai Express: it was withdrawn because the new company Tranz Scenic 1991 was not prepared to take it over;
3. Passenger services were not taken over by West Coast Rail: what happened was that two directors of West Coast Rail in their personal capacities bought 50% of Tranz Scenic fronm Tranz Rail, and the resulting a new company, Tranz Scenic 2001, ran the remaing long-distance trains until Toll bought back the 50%;
4. New carriages are replacing pre-war 56-footers on the South Island trains, but as current plans stand the old ones will continue soldiering on on the Overlander.
Well, I guess it is like everywhere.
Victoria in recent years upgraded the longer distance train fleet, recording good passenger growth. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regional_fast_rail
If you are going to run freight over the lines, why not run passengers too? Of course it would have to be commercially profitable, but it is a bit hard to see
why it might not be given the tourists that use it.
I did use planes to get around from city to city (expensive) and also the bus, which was nice but probably not so fast and you can’t really eat lunch on board.
Queensland’s Tilt trains aren’t profitable, however, if I recall correctly, their “farebox” ratio is actually better than the farebox ratio for trains running on
the usual commuter network!
A lot of good points…
Some simple points:
– Local usage of long distance passenger trains was severely eroded in the 1990s/2000s because the price of car ownership plummeted (helped by protectionism for new car imports ending) and intense domestic air fare competition. This killed the Northerner and the Bay Express.
– Competition by coaches and minibuses undercut the prices of rail (and speed) so the bottom of the market went to road.
– TranzRail did NOT run down long distance passenger rail, but introduced new services and put a lot of effort into expanding capacity on some routes. Nobody talked of Auckland-Tauranga and Auckland-Rotorua under state ownership in the 70s or 80s. They gave them a good go, but Tauranga really needed local traffic (which preferred air and car), and Rotorua suffered because the freight business wasn’t working so the entire cost of the line had to be born by the passenger service, which wasn’t going to happen. The Rotorua line’s biggest problem being the steepness of the line, which has severely limited capacity of freight trains on the route, but also the bulk traffic from Rotorua is NOT heading to Waikato but to Mt Maunganui, so the existing line simply doesn’t go to where most of the freight needs to go.
Government considered subsidies for all of the cut services, but the only one it had residual interest in was the Southerner. West Coast Rail provided no information at all on costs and revenues to make it possible for any rational consideration of the merits of the demands for subsidies. The Southerner was subject to a MED funded study into its future, which showed that there wasn’t one.
btw I know quite a few NZTA staff and at least one at MOT cycle to work, which is I believe more popular than driving, but happy to be corrected.
I’m always surprised that Auckland-Rotorua passenger rail wasn’t more successful. You would think the tourist flows between the two cities would be a pretty massive and it seems like a fairly scenic journey in parts.
One would think that would be the most likely inter-city passenger line to be revived – though my understanding is that some of the tracks have been ripped out since 2001 when the service ended.
That’s the problem, you cannot possibly earn enough revenue from a daily return rail trip to pay for the long run capital costs of this single line. Sad in my view, the Rotorua line is in the wrong place, and there isn’t enough traffic to make it profitable. A candidate for a cycle rail trail through the Mamakus?
I actually sort of agree with liberty for once. One passenger train a day is not enough to make the line pay.
However it should be kept for future use. The main reason would be if Auckland wins over Tauranga in major shipping contracts then there could well be enough demand for a container train to run to Auckland.
The other option would be for trans-shipping of Fonterra goods bound for Hamilton Warehouse from Reporoa factory, 40km south of Rotorua.
It depends. Airlines will often sell tickets below cost price because they make a smaller loss rather than a larger loss on seats that they have not been able to sell.
Hotels do the same thing. It’s called discounting.
If you run no trains, you make no money. The question is, are the losses larger or smaller if trains are run on the line
than without them?