Commuters at Wellington Railway Station. Photo / Bloomberg
Commuters at Wellington Railway Station. Photo / Bloomberg
Wellington train commuters are facing serious disruption after Kiwirail announced all trains would run on a reduced schedule and a reduced speed limit after an equipment fault.
Starting this morning, all trains are operating at a 70km/h speed limit, and train services will be running at reduced timetables.
Wellington commuter Asher Wilson Goldman told NZME the disruption is massive, and that KiwiRail has “hamstrung the lives of hundreds of thousands of people”.
He gets on the train at its first stop in Waikanae, so was lucky enough to get a seat – but said he knew immediately that others would not have it as easy.
“Even at the first stop there were three times as many people as I would normally see and it just got busier and busier.”
“On the train people were resigned but glad to be there - but, looking at people’s faces outside, there was some pretty angry faces and some pretty depressed ones.”
The disruption is due to a broken track evaluation car – the only one in the country.
Inspections on the Kāpiti, Hutt Valley and Wairarapa lines are overdue, making them non-compliant, so temporary speed restrictions have been imposed until the evaluation car is fixed.
KiwiRail National HR Operations Manager Paul Ashton told Wellington Morning’s Nick Mills the fault is “embarrassing” for the company.
“It affects hundreds or thousands of people across the region and we are working as fast as we can to remedy it as soon as it became known.”
Ashton told Mills the executives planned to take any criticism from the meeting with Michael Woods “on the chin”.
“It’s embarrassing for us as an organisation and we shouldn’t be in this situation.”
He said KiwiRail had “some warning” that disruption was likely.
“We probably didn’t go on the front foot enough. Clearly, there will be some learnings from this and we will take those on the chin and work on how we react to them in the future.”
The track evaluation car will assess the tracks this evening and he hopes the restriction will be lifted as soon as possible – the worst case scenario, he said, was disruption remaining until Friday afternoon.
On why KiwiRail only has one track evaluation car, Ashton said the cars are expensive pieces of equipment costing up to $3 million each.
Even if KiwiRail was to purchase another car, the wait period is up to three years – so a replacement would not be in the country until at least 2026.
On Saturday, KiwiRail said it was aiming to have the problem fixed within days rather than weeks.
Chief operations officer Siva Sivapakkiam said track assessments would begin this afternoon, and the goal was to have the disruption over by Friday night “at the latest”.
Goldman said it beggared belief that KiwiRail only has one track inspection car in the entire country.
“Some serious questions have to be asked of KiwiRail...what we have at the moment is unacceptable
“It’s absolutely ridiculous that they’ve hamstrung the lives of thousands of people.”
Deputy leader of the National Party Nicola Willis said it was “unacceptable” that Wellingtonians have their commutes disrupted “because KiwiRail can’t organise themselves”.
“Why was there no backup plan?” she asked Wellington Morning’s Nick Mills.
“Standard operating practice in any business is to understand what in the supply chain is mission critical, and to have backup plans.”
On Friday, Greater Wellington Regional Council chairman Daran Ponter said KiwiRail’s safety equipment failure showed an abysmal lack of accountability and management.
“To be clear, this is a monumental failure by KiwiRail. The poor maintenance of this essential piece of equipment is holding the entire North Island’s rail network hostage.”
