In an ideal world, I would love us to have more trains.  

 In an ideal world, I think it would be great if all our big cities had rail passenger services.  

Not just Auckland and Wellington that Transport Minister Chris Bishop was talking about when he announced this morning that there’s $600 million in this week’s Budget going into rail.  

I won’t go all scratched record on it and start asking where the money is for the Greater Christchurch area, but I would love to see money going into commuter rail here.    

Because if we do think rail has a future in New Zealand —and I’m talking about passenger rail as well as sending freight by rail— I think it’s more realistic to expect commuters to take the train than people going out of town on holiday.  

So that’s one area where I’d put the money – into passenger trains. And that’s probably my ideal world scenario, which I’ll come back to. 

What I think is certainly more achievable though, is getting more freight shipped around the place on trains. Because we’ve shown how bad we are as a country at maintaining our roading network. And, if you believe the rail advocates, they’ll tell you that the main problem is trucks. That they’re responsible for chewing up the roads.  

And, when you travel down the east coast of the South Island, it does strike you how much of a donkey track State Highway 1 is in parts.  

Yet we seem to be quite happy for these trucks —designed in countries where they do have massive motorways— to go up and down that donkey track night and day, 365 days a year.  

So get more freight on trains first. And then, if we’re going to do anything more with passenger trains, focus on getting people to work and school on a train instead of expecting them to go to Nelson for their holidays on a train. 

Because I’ve long thought how brilliant it would be if we had a rail service from Rangiora to the city and from Rolleston to the city.  

Imagine what the motorways would look like. Imagine getting into town on a train —not a bus, where you can get all the same disruptions as other vehicles— but you scream into town on the train, you don’t have to worry about finding a park, and then get the train back home again in the evening.  

The Canterbury Regional Transport Committee obviously likes the sound of that too. 

This is the entity that involves all councils in the canterbury region —including ECAN— and NZTA. And the number one job of the regional transport committee is to implement the Canterbury Regional Transport Plan. 

In recent years, there’s been talk of passenger rail services running from the city to Rolleston and as far north as Amberley. 

Reading the most recent regional transport plan, the enthusiasm that we were hearing a couple of years seems from the transport committee seems to have been tempered a bit.  

There is still political interest in a passenger rail service south of Christchurch but there are no timeframes and, of course, where the money comes from is the stumbling block.  

But there are positive signs if you're into the idea of rail, like I am.  

The regional transport plan sets a goal of increasing the amount of freight moved by train in Canterbury by 100% over the next eight or nine years. So that’s good.  

But it also talks about the population of Selwyn growing by around 58,000 people over the next 20-and-a-bit years. And, in Waimakariri, the population is expected to go up by 25,000 people in the same period.  

Christchurch is expected to have another 66,000 people. 

So there’s an extra 149,000 people living in the Greater Christchurch area, and we think the Northern Motorway and the Southern Motorway are going to be just fine? Dream on. 

And that’s the argument right there for passenger rail services in the Greater Christchurch area.  

Which is why when I ask, should we be investing more in rail here in Canterbury, my answer is yes.