Te Huia has been banned from travelling north of Papakura. Photo / Danielle Zollickhofer
Te Huia has been banned from travelling north of Papakura. Photo / Danielle Zollickhofer
Taxpayers and ratepayers will continue to subsidise Te Huia for another year despite the train stopping at Papakura and passengers paying extra fares to get into Auckland.
Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency announced yesterday that the KiwiRail train was banned from travelling any further north than Papakura after it failed to obey a red signal on two separate occasions.
It now means passengers face a five hour-plus return journey and an extra $14 a day in travel costs.
Te Huia is funded by a combination of passenger fares and public funding.
Operational funding for Te Huia was approved from April 2021 until June 30, 2024.
Waka Kotahi approved funding of $98.03 million, $85.8 million of which comes from Waka Kotahi with the remainder of $12.23 million picked up by the Waikato Regional Council, Hamilton City Council and Waikato District Council.
A Waka Kotahi spokesperson said that there will be no change to the funding model despite the service being stopped from running through to The Strand in Parnell in downtown Auckland.
KiwiRail’s executive general manager of operations Paul Ashton said on Tuesday that bus replacements between The Strand, Puhinui and Papakura will be in place this week, and passengers would not be required to pay for this service.
However, from next week, passengers would need to connect to an Auckland Transport service at Papakura and use an AT HOP card to continue through Auckland.
“From Monday people will have to pay for metro trains or a bus from Papakura,” said a KiwiRail spokesperson.
Te Huia passengers needing to travel onto The Strand from Papakura will need to get another train and a bus.
The new daily journey time will take at least two hours 35 minutes each way and require passengers to fork out another $7.18 for an AT Hop adult fare on top of the $12 Bee Card rate for Te Huia from Frankton.
Passengers travelling to Britomart from Frankton will have to catch one train from Papakura. The total journey time will be just under three hours one way and will cost commuters the same rates as above.
The Te Huia passenger train service between Hamilton and Auckland launched in 2021. Photo / Supplied
Hamilton City Council Deputy Mayor Angela O’Leary said the fact that Te Huia passengers will have to pay more money to make their way through Auckland is not good enough.
”I’m certainly going to be asking Waka Kotahi to come up with the dollars to provide that bus connection as part of the ticket service,” she said.
Asked what she thought the future of the train service would be now O’Leary said “look, I’m, I’m really not sure at the moment.
”We’re only halfway through the trial and the numbers have been great. People are starting to use it; it was starting to become reliable.”
O’Leary said she was frustrated and questioned why the incidents weren’t treated as a managed risk or why they were allowed to happen.
She has called for an urgent meeting between Hamilton City Council, Waikato Regional Council, the new Future Proof Passenger Transport subcommittee, Waka Kotahi and KiwiRail to discuss the matter.
It follows two separate incidents in less than a month in which the KiwiRail train driver failed to obey a red signal, putting the train at risk of colliding with another train.
The most recent incident was yesterday morning, according to KiwiRail’s Ashton who said the train was “not carrying passengers” when it overran a signal just north of Hamilton.
“There were no other train movements in this area, and it was outside the Auckland metro region,” Ashton said.
The other incident was three weeks ago and saw Te Huia pass a stop signal near Penrose. After this incident, Ashton said an investigation “opened immediately” and was nearing completion.
