We’re divorcing the petrol pump. Our new love: trains

With the cost of petrol hitting $4 a litre, let’s explore viable alternative options for getting around our towns, cities and this beautiful country.

Petrol hit $4 a litre this month with no signs of it coming down any time soon. "Higher fuel demand will mean higher prices." said AA spokesperson Terry Collins.

So let’s reduce that demand.

For many people, being wedded to a car is not something they actually want or desire. It’s just that the alternatives aren’t there. Especially if you’re planning a trip out of town.

How easy is it to plan a long weekend away in Aotearoa New Zealand if you are not going to drive or fly? InterCity buses offer some limited options. But what about a train trip, perhaps also taking your bike? For those in Auckland, in the summer, travelling to Mt Maunganui for a beach weekend? For those living in Wellington and Palmerston North, friday evening until Monday afternoon in the mountain town of Ohakune? For those in Christchurch, a couple of days in Dunedin or a weekend in Kaikoura or Picton? Visiting wineries in Hawkes Bay? All these places have railway lines connecting them.

Unlike the rest of the world, a weekend adventure by train in Aotearoa New Zealand is virtually impossible. Few long-distance passenger rail services remain and those that do make it extremely difficult to plan a weekend away. For example, the Capital Connection does not run on weekends or on public holidays. The Northern Explorer does not run every day.

Want to get to a weekday business meeting starting at 9am in central Auckland when living in Palmerston North. After dinner at home, catch the night train and wake up in downtown Auckland. First, we need to bring back a night train.

Aotearoa New Zealand stands out in global car ownership levels and the level of flying, both nationally and internationally. It also stands out for the difficulty in travelling around New Zealand by public transport. Chicken or egg? As public transport got worse, car ownership rose and the non-drivers and poor drivers suffered.

But the thing is, we can make travel easier, more enjoyable and save families and the nation money. All while we significantly reduce our dependence on imported fuels and lowering emissions.

When we look at transport options overseas, New Zealand is an odd one out

Looking at the per capita domestic transport emissions of some other countries can give some indication of how we could travel differently. Here is a selection of countries, focussing especially on some European nations with similar populations and incomes.

Source: Our World in Data

New Zealand sits at the lower edge of familiar English-speaking high emission countries of Australia, Canada and the United States. But the UK’s emissions are far smaller than for New Zealand. In continental Europe, the Netherlands (think biking), Switzerland and Finland (think buses and trains), and Norway (think electric cars) have lower per capita domestic transport emissions than New Zealand.

First, there is driving to consider. According to Wikipedia, in Europe the countries of Sweden, Switzerland, Norway, the UK and Finland have fewer cars per capita than in New Zealand. In 2024, in New Zealand there were 881 cars per 1000 people, Finland had 752, Norway 630, Switzerland 603, the UK 584, the Netherlands 513 with a low of 470 in Sweden. Electrifying the car fleet is far easier if there are fewer cars to switch to electricity. To get around these lower car ownership countries, it is clear that a car is not always needed.

Rates of car ownership, types of car, and driving habits will all influence the emission data shown in the following diagram. New Zealand’s car and light truck related emissions per capita are double those of Norway and significantly higher than the other countries shown.

Source: https://robbieandrew.github.io/country/

Then there is domestic flying, with data provided by Our World in Data. While they might drive electric cars in Norway, they are frequent flyers internally with a per capita figure of 185kg in 2024, higher than New Zealand’s 177kg. But the figures are significantly lower for other countries. The lowest was in Switzerland at 4kg, next the UK at 23kg, Sweden 31kg, and the Netherlands at 33kg.

In Switzerland you do not need to fly internally given the extensive electrified rail network with connecting buses to smaller towns.

But many of these countries have high international aviation emissions, with people often taking their holidays in other regions, using flights, such as to the Mediterranean or much further afield.

Given the lack of alternatives such as rail, domestic aviation is important in New Zealand. Its emissions in 2024 were estimated to be 901 kilotonnes of CO2e. But emissions from cars and light trucks are far higher at 8,697 Kt. In 2024, railways were estimated to emit just 112kt, coming from both freight and passenger rail

Where might we get the quickest wins?

Giving people viable options that save us petrol money, give us safe alternatives and reduce emissions would be easiest on relatively short routes. For instance:

• Wellington to Palmerston North

• Auckland to Tauranga

• Christchurch to Dunedin

And we can also consider longer routes such as Wellington to Napier and Wellington to Auckland via a night train. Not only, do these longer trips help us unlock the ball and chain relationship we have to the petrol pump, but also to the costs and emissions of flights.

Where to start? Give people great train and connecting bus options

Our work with Women in Urbanism and Te Huia user survey showed us the broad range of people that want to use trains for longer distance trips. They included:

• Caregivers with young children who were sick of stressful car trips and even more stressful flights.

• Older folk who didn’t feel comfortable driving at night or long distances

• People that didn’t feel safe on fast highways, driving in amongst big trucks or windy roads like (e.g. over the Kaimai ranges)

• Groups of friends who wanted to travel together and relax on the journey, play games and have a social drink on the train

• People who wanted to focus on the beautiful scenery

• People who wanted to travel with their bicycle

• Students travelling between their university and home town

• Parents of teenagers who didn’t want them on the open roads

• People who wanted to access shopping, concerts, healthcare and friends and whanau in another town

• People who don’t want to pay high costs for petrol or flights

We’re not just talking commuters here, the list of people who want a dignified train trip with connecting buses and active modes continues – these are a broad range of New Zealanders.

So what can we do for New Zealanders to make it easier?

Most Kiwis should be able to live in places where we can walk, bike, bus, train or even one day tram again, to schools, workplaces, supermarkets, visiting friends and for a day out at local beaches.

This requires changing both the transport and urban planning environment. With transport, people switch modes often because of cost and convenience. And, some, by knowing that their choice of transport is creating fewer emissions. There also needs to be some sticks, reflecting the real cost of driving, such as increasing the cost of carbon and putting in congestion charges. We need compact people friendly urban areas, not sprawling car dependent suburbs. Change is possible, as shown in Holland.

The Better Moves vision

Better Moves has been developed by All Aboard. Electric cars certainly play their part. But they are just one feature of a much wider transport and urban design transformation. The report states:

‘Compared with a future that relies mainly on electrifying our vehicle fleet, Better Moves shows what becomes possible when we also change the transport system around it. By making it easier to get around with less driving and fewer vehicles, we can achieve much more than lower emissions. The results point to a future that is better for people, better for Te Taiao, and better for Aotearoa.’

It is worth diving into the Better Moves report. But a summary by Kasey McDonnell is also a good read.

Our study comparing Finland and New Zealand showed us the direction of travel we should be moving in. In Finland, a country with a population not much larger than New Zealand, in 2024 there were over 15 million passenger trips on Finland’s long-distance trains. During the same year, New Zealand’s regional and long-distance rail passenger trips were a mere 360,000.

People use long distance trains in Finland because they are frequent, fast, comfortable and connect towns and cities. But they also use them as they do not need as many cars to move about in urban areas. Finns bike, bus, tram, and train locally. This is the number of public transport trips undertaken Helsinki in 2025. In posting this graphic on the Future is Rail’s Linkedin page, Benjamin Love noted ‘ Helsinki managed to have 381 million trips on public transit in 2025 calendar year (a growth of 20 million over 2024), while Auckland's was only 89 million’.

And transport expert Russell King, posting on the Transport Leaders Club, also tackles car dependency in association with reducing cost of living pressures for lower income families. Under the title ‘It’s the Car, Not the Fare: Rethinking Transport Poverty” he has the following key Takeaways:

• · Our current transport systems are bad for households on low incomes and the policies we put in place to address it are at best, misguided.

• · Many households without a car aren’t car-free by choice, and are often cut off from jobs and services because there aren’t viable alternatives.

• · For many low-income households, the biggest transport cost is not the fare or the fuel. It is having to own a car in the first place, because there’s no realistic alternative.

• · Car-dependent transport systems also add hidden costs, such as the cost of parking built into rents and prices, plus worse air pollution and higher crash risk.

• · Fuel tax cuts and universal free fares mostly treat the symptoms, and they take money away from the better services that would actually reduce car dependency.

• · A better transport system for households on low incomes would:

1. Reduce car dependency by providing good alternatives

2. Support incomes, not individual modes

3. Plan land use so people can more easily reach what they need

He goes onto say:

‘The root problem is that our transport systems fail to give low-income people good alternatives to the car. For a household forced to own a car, removing that need would make a big difference to their finances, far bigger than any fare discount or fuel tax cut. Yet transport poverty policy rarely focuses on this.’

His ideas are very much in line with Better Moves and, ultimately, those of the Future is Rail.

The Future is Rail vision

We want to see regional passenger rail revived. We set this out in our Quick Guide and the change required for this to happen including:

• Expanding the passenger rail network

• More frequent services

• Establishing a national public transport planning agency

• Connecting buses and active modes to the train services

• Investing in new stations, upgrading existing stations and more rolling stock

• Completing electrification

• And protecting rail corridors and station sites

Each of the countries examined here have their strengths, the Netherlands with its great biking infrastructure, Norway with its transition to EVs, Switzerland with its efficient fully electrified passenger rail and Finland with its integrated public transport networks. A Swiss-quality rail system may not be easily in reach but an improved train and joined up bus would go a long way - particularly since we are starting from such a poor position.

None of the countries looked at are perfect. They all need to further reduce their transport emissions by significant amounts. But we can take the best from each country, see what we can afford under more balanced transport funding and, in our own Kiwi style, design a truly transformational transport system that is good for people and gentle on the planet.

The Future Is Rail.

organiser@thefutureisrail.org

022 154 9119