Editorial: Rail shutdown casts doubt on service's value

'It may be wondered why the city is getting an upgraded rail service'. Photo / Steven McNicholl

If Aucklanders returning to work today have taken to commuting by train they are in for a surprise. No trains have been running in Auckland since Christmas Day. None. The entire service has been taken off the rails until at least January 10 so work can be done on the long-running electrification and upgrading of the network. This must be KiwiRail's idea of a joke.

Not far from the railway, the Newmarket motorway viaduct is being replaced. The project has been engineered in a way that has enabled the bridge to be demolished and rebuilt in sections with minimal disruption to traffic on the busiest stretch of state highway in New Zealand.

Where roads are concerned, we take it for granted that surfaces can be replaced, repaired and maintained without entire thoroughfares being taken out of commission. In severe cases of disruption, such as in Quay St where new power and phone lines are being laid this summer, we complain. But when rail services are suspended, we raise hardly a whimper.

Maybe rail commuters are all on holiday at this time of year, or maybe those working are just as happy to take the buses that Auckland Transport has arranged. In that case, it may be wondered why the city is getting an upgraded rail service to run at untold operating losses, if buses can do the same job.

Rail freight services to and through the Auckland region have also been suspended for the next few weeks. Trucks will pick up rail cargoes at Pukekohe. Residents of eastern Pukekohe will have about 10 trucks an hour through the town which will be mightily unpleasant.

But KiwiRail's electrification project manager was surely joking when he said Pukekohe's experience would give a valuable demonstration of what New Zealand roads would be like in the absence of freight trains. Rail's share of all freight tonnage transported in New Zealand nowadays is roughly 6 per cent.

It is good for long-distance bulk shipments of coal and the like, to a port. But it cannot compete with road transport for the diverse, door-to-door deliveries that make up 73 per cent of freight movements. The same is true of urban passenger transport. In a city such as Auckland, trains will struggle to attract more than a small percentage of daily commuters, those who live near a station and work or study in the city centre.

The case for upgrading rail rests on assumptions that it will attract many more people to live near a station or become employers in the CBD. It is a gamble the Auckland Council is willing to take with the Government's money. "Build it", say our civic visionaries, "and commuters will come".

They point to the growth in rail passengers since the Britomart terminal was built. But it was apparent to early assessors of the business plan for rail project that it would probably draw passengers from certain bus routes rather than increase public transport patronage overall. That impression is reinforced by the ease with which buses have been substituted for trains during this rail shutdown.

The council-controlled agency Auckland Transport should be aggrieved at KiwiRail's clumsy project management. A total shutdown is surely not necessary for bridges to be raised to make room for electricity lines, or for other work on the tracks. This is not the first summer shutdown of the project and there is no assurance it will be the last. It is merely the most extensive.

It may have been timed for the quietest weeks of the year but passenger rail services in other places do not close down completely in these circumstances. They find ways to keep running. They realise their survival depends on being frequent and reliable. They have made themselves essential. Auckland's railway remains hard to take seriously.