Rail needs to be at the core of solving the regional mobility crisis
Rail offers significant benefits to people, the economy and environment, such as safety, low environmental impact, regional growth, mobility and scalability. The Future is Rail has a plan to get passenger rail back on track.
POLICYRESILIENCECLIMATE CHANGEPUBLIC TRANSPORTPLANNINGREFORMREGIONAL RAILTHE FUTUREINVESTMENT
Paul Callister
8/3/20262 min read
Is there a regional mobility crisis? At the Future is Rail we believe so.
But reading articles about the challenges of providing transport services to small towns and cities one would think that this is primarily an aviation or a roading issue. This narrow view often then leads to discussions of whether there should be subsidies provided to keep unprofitable air services operating. Or proposing more taxpayer funding to build unaffordable motorways.
But an entirely different question needs to be asked.
The question should be how to design a transport system to create mobility options for the greatest number of people, at the least cost and in a way that reduces emissions.
Aotearoa New Zealand is a country that now primarily depends on cars and planes to transport people over longer distances. Despite the uptake of EVs, most cars and all planes are dependent on fossil fuels. The Climate Change Commission warns that New Zealand needs to double climate action in the near future or New Zealand will miss our climate targets. Electric trains, carrying passengers or freight, need to play an important role in reducing emissions and expanding mobility choices.
This reliance on cars and planes was not always the case in New Zealand. It is also not so evident in many other nations. As we demonstrate in many of the articles on The Future is Rail website, countries such as Finland and Switzerland offer more options for travel, chiefly provided by a core system of frequent, affordable electric passenger trains, backed up by frequent, good quality buses.
There are clearly some places rail cannot serve, notably offshore islands and the areas railways never reached such as Nelson. But railway tracks still link the towns and cities in which most people live in New Zealand. We now need to run passenger trains on them.
Trains are a bargain. Greater Auckland estimates that 4.1km of the building cost of the new Warkworth to Te Hana highway would fund Te Huia train service for 100 years ($5.82m per year)’
The Future of Rail has developed a strategy to bring back passenger rail. It is an affordable, phased strategy.
