I travel a lot for work from big cities to small towns and regions. And I keep getting screwed over by the state of transit. I’ve had a work trip from Auckland to Hamilton, and so I figured the train would be the perfect option, it saves me from having to get a rental car, and I don’t have to deal with traffic when I’m barely awake. But no! It only runs from Hamilton to Auckland in the morning. So I had to do the drive. And it sucks.
Now I’m doing another work trip from Wellington up to Palmerston North. There is a train! So easy. So convenient. Except the same issue. It runs from palmy down to Wellington in the morning. So now I’m having to go up the night before all because we can’t have nice things like decent trains.
I understand that capital connections is getting new trains and a promise for double the number of trains. But that’s going from 1 train in each direction to 2 trains in each direction each day. But that is years away. Why can’t we do better?
There have been a dozen situations in the last year that I’ve wanted to go somewhere just far enough away that it isn’t practical to taxi but too close to fly. And my only options are a bus that’s I swear is always late or a rental car. And most of the drive is right next to tracks that could be being used. I don’t need high speed trains, they would be nice but all I want is some reliable option to go against the flow of traffic so I can get to work.