Well it sounds like the Helensville rail trial service will end on December 24th, according to ARTA’s press release:
The Auckland Regional Transport Authority (ARTA) and the Auckland Regional Council (ARC) said today that the trial rail service to Helensville would end in December this year, just prior to the three week shut down for the continuation of rail upgrade work around the network. The trial service began on 14 July, 2008.
ARTA’s General Manager, Customer Services, Mark Lambert says, “To date an average of 43 passengers per day have travelled in total on the three daily services. The subsidy paid by the ratepayer and taxpayer per person per journey for this service is $45.72. This compares with a regional average of $5.02 per passenger per journey”.
Mr Lambert says, “A great deal of time, effort, promotion and research was put in by ARTA towards making this service successful within constraints such as limited rolling stock and taking into consideration the provision of services to other parts of the region. The local community rail promotion group also put much time and work into promoting the service as did the ARC’s Rodney representative, Councillor Christine Rose”.
Auckland Regional Council Chairman, Mike Lee said that he is very disappointed that for a number of reasons the trial service to Helensville did not work out, but given the current state of the rail system he was not surprised. He said the ARC is working with ARTA on formulating a more economic replacement service
“The ARC Chair of the Transport and Urban Development Committee, Cr Christine Rose and myself have asked ARTA to assess the feasibility of another trail service to Waimauku with more services to serve a wider catchment of travellers including students and shoppers and with the option of integrating the bus service from Helensville with the rail timetable to act as a feeder to Huapai”.
In respect of the termination of the Helensville service, ARTA will communicate to all customers who used the service, shortly, outlining other available options.
Clearly, this is not the kind of outcome we would have hoped for, but I think it was pretty inevitable. For a number of reasons. Firstly, Helensville is pretty small – with a population of only 2500. Once you start looking at the proportion of those people who work in an area serviced by the railway line and are prepared to get up extremely early to catch the train, the numbers are pretty damn small. By contrast, the successful Pukekohe rail service reaches a town with a population of around 25,000. Furthermore, by running only one train a day each way if someone wanted to catch the train from Helensville to the CBD and back again it would involve a very long day indeed. And finally, the tracks beyond Waitakere sound like they are in reasonably poor condition – which means that the trains had to travel quite slowly, making the trip between Helensville and Britomart well over an hour long.
It will be interesting to see what happens out west though, whether some trains are extended to service Huapai, which is a growing part of Auckland. Perhaps all trains currently terminating at Waitakere station (generally around every third train I think) could travel on to Huapai?
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Reading the ARC meeting notes, it sounds like ARC/ARTA want to trial a regular fequency Huapai service, but NZTA didn’t want to be involved which makes it rather expensive for ARC to do on their own.
Overall doesn’t sound good. I hope that maybe in 5-10 years with a more reliable and PT integrated network that the service can be trialled again and be successful. The new station platforms will still be there so that wthat won’t have been a waste of money.
One service a day was a death sentence and made this inevitable from day dot, it means you have to be working a pretty tight schedule and are sure you’ll never have to work late…
Well that was the problem, it was a commuter train and at an atrocious hour too. If the service had actually been a tad more regular it might have worked.
I am doubtful that more frequent services would have made a huge difference. In the end I think the population catchment was too small and the train was too slow. More services would have just meant more wasted money.
You’re probably right there Josh…
Would be better to improve the bus service to Kumeu. When the SH16/SH18 interchange is done it will be pretty quick to get from Kumeu to Albany, Henderson and the city. Building a NW busway along the NW Motorway would be even better.
I have to agree with jarbury, unfortunately although good in intention, I don’t believe it was ever a viable route. I think it would have been much better to trail a Hamilton service than that.
In a vaguely related matter, does anyone know if there are any concrete plans for Southern line services to be extended to Drury. I know this has been talked about in the past, but I haven’t heard anything recently.
Given its only 5km, and it is more convenient for those coming of the Southern Motorway seems to be a no brainer.
Would be great to have a big billboard on SH1 just before the turnoff advertising the services.
Luke, it would not even be a matter of extending services, you would just need to stop the Pukekohe trains there.
One point is that all the discussions regarding electrification have always been to Swanson, NOT Waitakere. Are the plans to cut back services to Swanson, or run a mix to Waitakere?
Helensville is far too small, it’s notable that the NorthWestern Motorway once planned to go to Helensville shows no sign of going anywhere close (in fact the latest SH16 extension wont even be 4 lanes). An express bus from Helensville would need to be viable first, but sadly ARTA is thinking rail first rather than getting a good bus alternative.
The same could be said of Hamilton, which could presumably sustain a high quality express commuter coach service if the demand existed. It would be as fast as rail, which has been trialled and seriously failed only a few years ago. The difference between the Hamilton-Auckland and Palmerston North-Wellington routes is quite simply that the Wellington one has a catchment of people from Otaki and Waikanae (soon to disappear) to add people along the way, I doubt if there are many commuters between Pukekohe and Hamilton, or likely to be. There are no towns where people are likely to choose to live in, to commute to Auckland, or rather Auckland CBD, Wiri and Papakura.
Liberty
I know of one guy in my workplace alone who commutes from Huntly every day as he’s got a lifestyle block just outside of town. I also remember reading a piece in the granny about people looking at places such as Meremere, Rangiriri, Huntley and Ngaruawahia as commuting alternatives to Auckland due to the cost of housing up here.
Also, just another question, why will the Otaki and Waikanae catchment disappear? Due to the proposed highway?
There’s about 20,000 people living in the towns between Pukekohe and Hamilton, which is a fairly significant amount of people. How many of them are interested in going to Auckland or Manukau (or Hamilton for that matter) on a regular basis is perhaps the more important question however.
Tuakau – 3,504
Pokeno – 1,761
Meremere – 459
Te Kauwhata – 1,194
Huntly East – 3,909
Hunly West – 2,925
Taupiri – 444
Ngaruawahia – 5,106
In terms of coach services, Intercity and Newmans run what looks to be a good dozen buses each way per day already and I assume there are other operators. They run along SH1 the whole way and stop only on request (taking 2 hours centre to centre) so I don’t think you could get much more express than that. If the train can achieve the proposed 2 hour journey then it will be comepetitive on time, and if it is competitive on price also I don’t see why a fair chunk of travellers will not chose the superior comfort and facilities of the train.
I guy in my office (in the CBD) lives in Huntly… I might ask him if he’d catch the train if one was available…
. Near 10 years on and nothing changes with rail PT, or it is worse, western line terminates at Swanson, Waitakere station dead since 2014, Kumeu and Huapai ignored and Helensville may as well be in another country. Despite the built stations and upgraded/maintained track.
South still ignored, Stations non existent between Papakura and Pukekohe (eg Drury and Paerata) and south west from Paerata to Waiuku.
Nothing changes? Please.
In reference to NAL north of Swanson or southern stations after Papakura until Pukekohe then nothing further south to Pokeno etc.. also nothing to Waiuku.
Why don’t AT team up with the Council run i-site and promote the likes of the GVR and the Parakai hot springs to get more on the trains and start services to those area’s during the off peak times whilst having services for peak times . AT don’t mind having one off services for the Rugby and Cricket at Eden park and the League and concerts at Mt Smart so why can’t they do it for those “far off places” . The reason I mentioned Parakai hot springs as they are the only ones in the Auckland area as Waiwera is now closed and it could be a boost to the west ?
Interesting idea. AT appear to be only interested in a metro that caters for CBD commuters so expansions north/south to existing metro system are rejected for several reasons:
– population too low to provide enough cbd commuters
– distance away from cbd too great
– hence commute time too long so will be unpopular
– can’t do expresses as this would interfere with metro holy grail of very frequent all station stoppers
– busses will do (despite congestion)
– commuters prefer cars (despite congestion)
– Talk of virtual light rail is automatic reject of extending metro (especially NAL)
– no interest in potential non commuter passengers
I wonder what will change in the next ten years? Maybe metro stations at Drury and Paerata? As for the rest I’d bet nothing, like there will be no LR west to Kumeu either
I think you’ve summed it up pretty well, although your spin on why the do that is off I think. AT are only interested in train services that can actually do meaningful things for the transport network.
It’s not that frequent all-stoppers is a ‘holy grail’, its that its very effective and moves thousands of people an hour in the suburbs. Disrupting thousands of people an hour to move at best hundreds an hour with some express train from a little town outside the suburbs is just a bad idea.
Those outer towns are tiny catchments that are very far from anywhere people want to go. Even if you could justify spending so much money on so few people, the outcomes for the city are minimal.
Why not trains to far of places like Parakai Springs? Because they are far off for a start, which means the cost a lot to serve. And because very few people go out to the hot pools each day, even on a busy day, the return on the double-down cost would be very low.
One off services to the stadiums are used to help manage the sheer task of tens of thousands of people all going to the same place at the same time. If you start to get twenty or thirty thousand people going to the hot pools within the same hour, then a train would probably be a good idea there too.