In light of various party policies endorsing the return of regional rail travel to New Zealand to improve public transport, reduce road congestion and reduce our dependency on fossil fuels, I decided to look at various routes that could be reopened across the country. The largest, involving regional rapid rail services between the centres of Auckland, Hamilton, Tauranga and Rotorua, is a great plan that is already well documented. But what about restoring rail transport to other regions, using the existing rails that have been neglected by passenger services for decades?
A prime connection that could be rebuilt is the cross-country link from the North Island Main Trunk line at Palmerston North to New Plymouth, via Whanganui. For decades until the Main Trunk opened fully in 1908 this was the second leg of all rail journeys between Wellington and Auckland - passengers would journey from the capital to New Plymouth and then board a steamer for the remainder of the trip to Onehunga on the Manukau Harbour, and then travel the final few miles by train from Onehunga. The Marton to New Plymouth line was started in the 1870s and completed in 1885, but all passenger services ended in 1983.
I'm not pretending to be knowledgeable about rolling stock, but was envisaging self-contained electric railcars like the Japanese BEC819 series to save the expense of electrifying all the existing rail lines. This is of course emerging technology, and if speedy progress is required, perhaps diesel units might be procured, with the proviso that they should be convertible to full electric running.
A reopened service would be designed to replace public coach services and as much private transport as possible, so would need a good spread of stations for maximum population coverage. I've set out distances between stations and a potential schedule for a 0900 service departing Palmerston North for New Plymouth, based on an average speed of 75km/h (the BEC819 has a max speed of 120km/h) and a one-minute dwell time at stations, suggesting an end-to-end journey of three and a half hours. The key would be to establish multiple services per day to build a viable replacement for the now-dominant but environmentally damaging private transport.
Blog: Public transport comes to Onehunga, 10 February 2015
Blog: Avondale to Onehunga tramlink, 31 October 2010
Blog: A Cook Strait tunnel, 16 April 2008
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