Thomas Nash: Greater Wellington Regional Council climate chair on the growing calls to revive the Wellington-Auckland sleeper train

Support is re-igniting for a Wellington to Auckland sleeper train, as air fares soar.

The idea was floated at a Wellington council meeting last week.

Greater Wellington Regional Council climate chair Thomas Nash says tracks between Auckland and Wellington are seriously under-utilised.

He says night trains are popular overseas, particularly in Europe, as a more affordable and lower emission option.

"Night trains are absolutely cranking at the moment, more and more services are opening up. They're really well-patronised - and that's partly because of the cost of flights."

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Domestic flights gone up in price quite significantly, so it's
prompted the calls again about restoring the Wellington to Auckland
night train. Now this idea has been around for quite
a long time, but it's been brought up again in
a Greater Wellington Regional Council meeting last week. The council's
Transport Committee chair Thomas Nash loves the idea. Hi, Thomas, Hey, Heather,
would you really use it?

Speaker 2 (00:20):
I would, yeah, I'd certainly do it. Maybe going one way,
maybe train up, fly back.

Speaker 1 (00:26):
How often do you have to go to Auckland.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
I don't have to go that often, but probably you know,
once every couple of months. Maybe.

Speaker 1 (00:33):
Yeah, do you have any kids?

Speaker 2 (00:35):
I do? You have two kids, and bringing them on
on the train might not be the best option for
the other side.

Speaker 1 (00:42):
Thinking about that, I was thinking about your poor partner
who has to be the one who's like soloing overnight
so you could go on a train.

Speaker 2 (00:48):
Yeah, no, that's a good point. But the thing is
a lot of people kids will know kids, they'll do
business travel, they'll travel up the night before because they
don't want to get the red eye in the morning,
which is also disruptive. So it's it's essentially the same
as that, instead of paying for a hotel the night
before your fresh few meetings in the morning, you just
get the night train one way.

Speaker 1 (01:09):
But then where do you shower?

Speaker 2 (01:11):
Yeah, I mean some of the cabins have showers and
then on some of the Like in Europe, the night
trains are absolutely cranking at the moment. More and more
services are opening up. They're really well patronized, and that's
partly because of as you said in the intro, cost
of flights is going up, so other options become more competitive. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:28):
But okay, so Thomas, we always talk about Europe, but
then we do a stink New Zealand version. Is our
version actually going to have shower, isn't it?

Speaker 2 (01:34):
Well? I think it would have to for it to work.
I mean the way to do it would be to
go out to the market and say, hey, we've got
this almost completely electrified Northoundland main train line between Auckland
and Wellington. Are there any private operators out there that
would like to run a service. They can come in
and have a look, do their own studies and set
it up and see if it makes sense. I sense

(01:56):
and some of the other people have looked into this
in mw ZALM that there would be an enough of
the market to make this work and then we'd get
a service that would be well, you could, you couldn't,
and that would be the point, right, Like we invest
a lot of money in the North is the main
trunk line renewal of tracks and track infrastructure to move

(02:17):
freight and passengers in the Auckland and Wellington metro areas,
But we don't use the track between Auckland and Wellington.
Say that's between Harness, Snork and Hamilton, let's say is
very much underutilized. So what was major public asset that
we don't use? So we're just saying I think the
people who are pitching for this are saying, let's go

(02:39):
out to the market and see if anybody wants to
use that for a night service.

Speaker 1 (02:42):
And so how much would it cost if we weren't
subsidizing it for a ticket?

Speaker 2 (02:46):
I mean I've seen some back of the envelope calculations
that say you could do it for one hundred bucks
each way Thomas unsubsidized. Yeah, because basically you would have
you would have have maybe various services, you'd have the
first class maybe Cavin and then you'd have kind of

(03:06):
business economy type seats which you know, life black thing,
and and then you would you would be able to
charge different different prices to different levels of service. And
I think on that basis you could. You could certainly
make it work and people people have you wouldn't. The
thing about it is all you need to do is
get the trains and the new trains and then you
would you would basically if you're a private operator, you

(03:29):
would pay off the trains over the over the kind
of ten fifteen, twenty years of the of the contract
that you've got to run it, and that would that
would be doable.

Speaker 1 (03:40):
Thomas, it's good to talk to you. Thank you very much.
Running us through. That's Thomas Nash, great at Wellington Regional Council.
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