Wellington trains lose 2 million annual passengers
Thursday, 3 April 2025
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New figures out from Wellington’s regional council show a fall in commuter train punctuality and reliability, but the biggest decline is the almost 2 million trips that were never taken.
It is a trend that politicians on both sides of the political divide say needs to reverse, but with varying willingness to invest in the issue long-term.
Papers to the Wellington Regional Transport Committee this week show that, after a horror period in recent years, Wellington bus patronage continues to improve but train figures are going the other way.
The Greater Wellington Regional Council has confirmed a decline in train trips taken on the Wellington commuter network from 7.27 million in 2018-19 – the last full year before the Covid pandemic – to 5.34 million in the last financial year. Punctuality had dropped by 6% while reliability was down 0.6%. Patronage dropped by 7.9% in the past year alone.
Transport Minister and Hutt South MP Chris Bishop said the Government was committed to improving the rail network, with about $800 million being spent to buy new trains and upgrade the Wairarapa and Manawatū lines, plus $137.2m to upgrade substations and $52.9m for “critical” network renewals.
“I want to see passenger numbers and trips grow on the network,” Bishop said.
But to Rongotai MP Julie Anne Genter and regional council transport committee chairperson Thomas Nash, both of the Green Party, the trend will not reverse until there is a long-term financial commitment from the Government to rail.
Nash alleged there was no confirmed new government investment in Wellington metropolitan rail from the end of this financial year, meaning reliability and punctuality would continue to fall and patronage would drop with it. That would lead to more traffic on the roads, he said. Long-term, guaranteed government funding was needed.
“It will continue to decline unless we see that long-term commitment,” he said.
Last Thursday’s mass train signals outage, which resulted in long queues for replacement buses and roads jammed with cars, showed what would happen without a decent investment in rail, he said.
“You are investing in roads really,” he said. Government funding that had been committed was well short of what was needed to fix decades of under-investment, he said.
He attributed the drop to more people working from home, job losses, an economic downturn, and reliability falling due to slow maintenance and renewal improvements.
It was a sentiment echoed by Genter, who called for a long-term government funding commitment to make trains more reliable and frequent.
“When trains are out it’s a complete disaster for the road network.
“People love taking the train when it’s frequent, reliable and affordable. There’s a real need to prioritise track work and maintenance, so they can be more reliable.”
A statement from Bishop’s office said there was ongoing funding of $50m annually for Wellington metro rail and the network, plus $64m for the network in the three years until mid-2027.
KiwiRail Wellington metro infrastructure manager Manjot Singh said the drop in patronage, post-Covid, was mirrored in Auckland.
Service reliability and punctuality could be affected by numerous factors, including trespassers on the tracks, weather, train operations and infrastructure condition, he said.
“The Wellington metro network is ageing and speed restrictions are put on to enable trains to keep running safely,” Singh said.
“There has been substantial Government investment in recent years to raise its standard and KiwiRail is in the middle of carrying out those upgrades.” However, those upgrades came with speed restrictions as the trains had to slow on recently upgraded lines.
Public Transport Users’ Association national co-ordinator Jon Reeves said reducing costs and minimising disruption – notably bad recently – was one way to reverse the trend.
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