All my friends keep moving to Whanganui.
I spent the first eighteen years of my life living in Gisborne. This is a city where you can walk from one side to the other in forty minutes, and I do not know a single person who ever rode the bus.
All I knew of trains was when we got to ride the steam train WA165 from the city — out to Murawai or Beach Loop — and then taking the train whenever we went to Wellington or Auckland.
My mum talks about taking the train from Gisborne to Wellington whenever she travelled here when she was younger, and ever since I first heard that that was possible, I’ve dreamed of a world where I could.
I know that sounds unbelievably trite.
But this is a piece about trains.
I keep on losing friends to other cities. People in my life find their permanent residences outside of Wellington — far out. Maybe it’s Wellington’s shocking housing market. Maybe it’s something else.
(It’s almost definitely Wellington’s shocking housing market.)
Regardless, they’re further than is easy to get to. I have friends I haven’t seen in months because they live too far away to get to — or places that public transport doesn’t go. I don’t drive, and I don’t want to drive — and I’m out of options.
I miss being able to go clubbing with my mates, spending meaningful time with people, working on shows with them, being able to run into them in town. The internet is no match to be able to meet people in person.
I’m out of options.
Wellington, if you’ve never been here, has four major train lines. CBD — Waikanae (I have taken it two times in seven years, cause it’s never running), CBD — Johnsonville, CBD — Melling (doesn’t run on weekends) and CBD — Upper Hutt, with an extension onto Masterton a couple of times a day.
These trains run… very infrequently and are usually bus replaced.
Auckland has a train system (that’s been intermittent for weeks) alongside a segment that reaches out to Hamilton, a train runs from Palmerston North to Wellington once a day, a few tourist trains run around Dunedin, and Kiwirail runs the TransAlpine from Christchurch to Greymouth.
And that’s… it.
Up until very recently, Kiwirail also ran the Northern Explorer service from Auckland to Wellington, and the Coastal Pacific from Picton to Christchurch, but is reportedly replacing those services with ‘multi-day experiences’ later in the year.
I don’t know about you folks, but as an average person living in Aotearoa, I’m not all enthused with the concept of exploring the wonders of such regional paradises as National Park and Taumarunui, especially at the inflated prices that these ‘experiences’ will cost.
The tourist dollar — the thing that Kiwirail is presumably courting — will likely not return later in the year, if it even does at all.
And until then, perfectly useful railway tracks are lying dormant, forcing people who wish to commute Auckland to Wellington (not to mention other cities) to fly — heavily weather dependent, and I guess you’re fucked if you’re afraid of flying, drive (it’s eight hours) or take the Intercity bus (twelve hours, with only a handful of short breaks).
The state of railway infrastructure in this country is horrendous, and it is absurd that we have let it decay to this point.
Let me illustrate, using images.
This is a map of the currently running trains in New Zealand — excluding scenic trips like the WA165 in Gisborne. I’ve scribbled out the Northern Explorer and the Coastal Pacific because they’re not currently running. The only addition not on the map is the Te Huia from Hamilton to Auckland.
This is what we’ve done, and it is a crying shame. It’s a travesty. It’s just really and utterly shit.
To make a comparison with somewhere else people might know — think of the UK. It might be a little on fire right now, but they at least have trains that run.
Brighton and Glasgow are about the same distance apart as Auckland and Wellington (give or take 80 or so km), and you can make that trip — via train — in just over six hours.
If you were to do the same via train in Aotearoa, you’d —
Well, you wouldn’t, because there’s no train that runs that route anymore.
But if you could, it’d take about twelve.
High-speed rail is our future. It’s renewable, it’s able to carry many, many more people than a bus or a car or a plane could, it’s on the ground, it allows for multiple stops across long distances, and for god’s sake, there’s cafes and toilets — it’s the ideal mode of transport, but no-one in this country wants to make the effort to invest in it in any meaningful way.
Why? Maybe all the powers that be are in the pocket of Big Airplane, or maybe no-one wants to make the effort.
Gotta spend all that government money on the roads, after all, like we’re not running out of fossil fuels or anything.
But the fact remains, it didn’t used to be like this.
This is an image of the historical train lines of New Zealand. It’s missing a handful of little lines, as well as heritage lines built to transport goods short distances, and the like, but look at that map.
It’s expansive. It covers most of the country. If there was a tiny line added in to serve the lower West Coast of New Zealand it would be comprehensive. It’s a much more wide and balanced set of routes than the absolute mediocre shitshow we have these days.
Most of these lines are unused now. Overgrown, covered in weeds, existing solely for the backgrounds of dystopic student films and indie album covers.
It is an absolute shame.
Imagine what New Zealand could be with quality, high-speed rail. You could get on a train in Wellington after work one day and get to Auckland before the night was out. You could train to the provinces, do work and virtual meetings on your journey from Dunedin to Christchurch, take the sleeper train home from your Northland music festival.
Commuting into the cities from the provinces would become more possible. You could bolster tourism in the regions or travel home to your small town for the weekends.
It would be worth it.
It would be viable.
It would reconnect New Zealand in a way that just isn’t possible with planes.
But no-one wants to take that risk.
One day I hope to be able to train to Whanganui, to train home to Gisborne, to pop down to Christchurch by train for the weekend.
And I really hope it’s still while I’m young enough to enjoy it.
Here’s how to support improving our rail network in NZ.
Sign this petition to Hon Michael Wood to stop the closure of the Northern Explorer and the Coastal Pacific.
Lobby your councilors and MPs to make an effort to improve rail in this country. Kick up a fuss when they don’t.
Ride the trains.
