Waikato Regional Council reveals fare costs for passenger rail service

Friday, 16 November 2018

The Hamilton-Auckland passenger rail service will start in March 2020 if the business case is endorsed by local government and NZTA provides funding.

Commuters can expect to pay $12.20 one way to travel from Hamilton to Papakura if they use a proposed passenger rail service to Auckland.

Users of the service on the 88-minute-long journey can expect the carriages to have wi-fi, a cafeteria, USB power points, toilets and bike racks when it is expected to start up in March 2020, according to Waikato Regional Council documents.

The service will have the capacity to carry 150-200 passengers per journey, subject to the number of carriages used. Its projected passenger demand will be 20,600 annually for the first year increasing to 103,000 by the third year.

From Papakura, commuters would then need to buy a ticket to travel on the Auckland rail network if they wish to travel on to Britomart.

The Waikato and Auckland rail ticketing systems are not yet integrated, but there were plans in the future to change that once the startup service is established, Councillor Hugh Vercoe said.

Waikato Regional Council chief financial officer Mike Garrett said a new interim ticketing system would be established next year that would be replaced by a national ticketing system within five years.

Garrett said they are still investigating the full operational costs of wi-fi access and the service's business case included the hardware for it.

The service will be contracted to Auckland Transport while ownership of the locomotives pulling the carriages will stay with KiwiRail.

The business case for the service will come before the council on November 21 where they will vote whether or not to endorse it. A similar vote will take place by Hamilton city and Waikato district councils in the coming weeks.

Taxpayers' Union executive director Jordan Williams criticised the project's cost, claiming the actual cost was $185 per person per trip.

'Regional planners have spent too much time playing SimCity. Neither ratepayers or taxpayers should be forced to pay for this white elephant.'

Vercoe said it was an investment in the region's future. The corridor between the two cities was an area where rapid growth is occurring and developing that area properly needed to be planned and managed.

'And transport is a key element in developing that corridor.'

Transport Minister Phil Twyford said the service would reduce gridlock on the Southern Motorway.

'We have to find smart alternatives to spending hours sitting on the motorway sitting in traffic stuck in motorway gridlock. This is one of the ways we are going to do that.'

The total project cost is estimated at $76.27 million over six years, which is down on the $81.7 million estimated in the report endorsed by the council's transport committee earlier this month.

Of that $76.27m, $9.46m will be funded by local government while the balance will be funded by NZTA's national land transport fund.

Of this, $49.46 million will be used to upgrade the Huntly station, to construct a rail station at The Base and to purchase and modify the carriages.

The operating costs was within the council's Long Term Plan budget while 100 per cent of the capital costs were funded by NZTA. Vercoe said if that funding was declined when NZTA's board met on December 14 , the project would likely be dropped.

'Why should ratepayers build a rail station? That's a government issue.'

Once the service was running, the council wanted to explore pushing the service further into Auckland including the airport. There would then be push to swap the diesel engines for electric-run locomotives.

'If we can bring that electric system down to Hamilton, that's the next stage. It's a faster train and more reliable,' Vercoe said.