Wairarapa commuters ill-served
They contribute to the capital’s talent and cashflow, but Wairarapa rail commuters are being shabbily treated, says
Some say Mussolini’s greatest achievement was getting Italian trains to run on time. Many Wairarapa commuters might think it would be worth digging up and breathing life back into the Fascist leader if he could get their trains to run on time.
At first glance the abysmal performance on the Wairarapa line for at least the last decade would seem like an easy fix. Just get good reliable rolling stock and bring the track up to standard.
But here’s the rub. It will cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
When you throw big numbers around, lightly populated areas like Wairarapa often don’t make the grade when the government reckoner shunts data through a cost-benefit algorithm and the money for big projects goes somewhere else.
But this isn’t just a Wairarapa problem. Thousands of people live in Wairarapa but their work is based in Wellington. Wairarapa is not just Wellington’s playground; it’s also one of the capital’s key talent repositories.
I have been writing stories about the Wairarapa line’s maladies for more than a decade, which has left me cynical about measures promised to correct them. At times the monthly punctuality rate has dropped to 50 per cent. That means just half of the services were getting to their destination within five minutes of schedule. Its operators are contracted to keep it above 95.
When you are a relatively green reporter and the Greater Wellington Regional Council tells you things are just about to improve because they’ve got new contracts coming up, more maintenance on the line planned and better locomotives on the horizon, you naively believe things are going to change.
Bitter experience has shown that any marked improvements never materialise.
However, it seems that now even the apologists are being realistic. The regional council now admits that there’ll be no serious improvement unless central government joins the party and coughs up some big dollars.
Now is the time the region needs to get in behind a Greater Wellington-KiwiRail proposal for funding in next year’s Budget to fix the Wairarapa line.
There is going to be competition for the money in the Budget, with other regions also asking for a big fat transport funding boost.
If the Wairarapa service continues to limp along, some future government, local or national, may very well say it is just too expensive to bring up to standard and axe it.
This would deal a devastating economic blow to Wairarapa and injure Wellington’s ability to source top talent from one of its most important commuter catchments.
I was talking to a commuter last week who had just sworn off using the train because he couldn’t take the risk. He threw up an interesting calculation.
He estimated that with each of the commuters drawing an average $70,000-plus salary in Wellington and bringing it back to their Wairarapa district it would amount to $70 million cashflow injection every year.
We’ve got to make it easier for these people to get to their chosen domiciles, not harder.
If this Government is serious about regional development it needs to acknowledge that transport links to the provinces need to function properly.
We’ve got to face reality. If our region is to thrive, our provinces need to be efficiently connected and, like it or not, rail still has a big part to play.
❚ Senior Dominion Post reporter Piers Fuller has been based in Wairarapa for 12 years.