The Green Party has promised a $4 billion plan to bring back passenger trains between New Zealand’s main cities, including an overnight sleeper train between Auckland and Wellington, a new service between Christchurch and Dunedin, and an extension of the Hamilton to Auckland Te Huia commuter train through to Tauranga.
The party announced the plan on Saturday 3 October as part of a wider transport package it said would be released in full later in the day. Stuff reported the total estimated cost at $4.02 billion. Most of that is for the Tauranga route, which the Greens estimate would cost $3.5 billion over two stages, 1News reported. The rest would pay for the overnight train and the South Island service.
The pitch rests on using track that already exists rather than building new lines. Green Party transport spokesperson Julie Anne Genter put it simply in the party’s announcement. “These tracks are already there, so we should use them.”
Co-leader Marama Davidson said long-distance travel was where people missed out most. “Where public transport has been invested in, it’s well used, saving people time and money every day. But for a lot of New Zealand, public transport options remain expensive and infrequent, especially when travelling long distances,” she said.
She blamed the condition of the network on decades of neglect. “Now, our aging rail infrastructure is suffering from a generation of underinvestment, leaving the rail network in a state of decline with cancellations, delays and bus replacements.”
For the Auckland to Wellington run, the Greens say the main need is new sleeper carriages and money to operate them. Genter said the trip suited a night train. “The train journey from Auckland to Wellington is long, which makes it perfect for an overnight service. All that is needed is new, comfortable sleeper trains and operating funding,” she told RNZ. The party says fares would cover the bulk of the overnight service’s running costs.
The Tauranga extension is the biggest and most complicated part of the plan. In the first stage the Greens would upgrade ventilation in the Kaimai rail tunnel so passenger trains could use it safely, build stations, add passing loops and make targeted track improvements. The party says no extra trains would be needed at first, with freight timetables adjusted to let passenger trains through the tunnel. A second stage would aim to cut the travel time between Auckland and Tauranga further. “Extending Te Huia to Tauranga would connect one of NZ’s fastest-growing regions,” Genter said.
In the south, the party points to bridge, track, drainage and resilience work KiwiRail has already done on the Main South Line. It says a Christchurch to Dunedin passenger service would then need stations, more passing loops, better signalling and upgrades to some level crossings.
The Greens say the economic consultancy Infometrics reviewed their numbers. The party’s release quoted the firm as finding that “the cost estimates provided are reasonable, with various reasonable estimates made, based on official costings or business cases, or extrapolating capital and operating costs from existing services.” The party has said it will release the Infometrics report once the whole transport package is out.
The plan drew a cool response from the two coalition leaders asked about it.
National leader Christopher Luxon said taxpayers should not carry routes that could not pay their way. “You cannot have that being underwritten by taxpayers, by hardworking folk that are paying their taxes into something that is a white elephant and not commercially viable,” he told 1News. He questioned how the losses would be met. “How will they fund the loss-making associated with passenger rail services that don’t make money? That don’t cover their own costs?”
Luxon told RNZ that passenger rail could work in the right places, but only with enough people. “Where it makes sense that’s really good but you need a concentration of population to make passenger rail work.” He said National remained committed to its 17 roads of national significance, with six of those projects expected to be under way early in 2027.
New Zealand First leader Winston Peters, who has been Minister for Rail in the coalition, was less dismissive of a sleeper train but questioned the Greens’ homework. “There’s nothing new about the idea, that’s been around for over 100 years,” he told RNZ. He said his party did not rule ideas out but wanted to be sure they could work. “That’s the point. Our job is to make sure it’s viable.”
Peters also took a swipe at the Greens’ costings. “I’m not saying I’m opposed to supporting anything until I’ve done the work on it, done the analysis, because the Greens will announce 1000 announcements, but as for the business case, they wouldn’t know what the expression means.”
The routes in the Greens’ plan all had passenger trains within living memory. The Northerner overnight train between Auckland and Wellington stopped in 2004, the Southerner between Christchurch and Invercargill ended in 2002, and the Kaimai Express to Tauranga was withdrawn in 2001. Te Huia began running between Hamilton and Auckland in 2021. Our interactive map of every railway New Zealand built, and every one it closed shows how far the passenger network has shrunk.
The proposal lands in a campaign where transport spending has split the parties. National is campaigning on roads, while the Greens are pitching public transport as a cost of living measure that gives people an alternative to driving. Whether a $4 billion rail programme is affordable will depend on the shape of the next government and whether the Greens hold enough seats to bargain for it.
If you are still weighing up where the parties stand on transport, tax and spending, try our voting tool to see which party best matches your views.
Would you take an overnight train from Auckland to Wellington, or a train from Christchurch to Dunedin, if one ran? Is this a sensible use of $4 billion or a white elephant? Tell us what you think in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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