If the Southerner train between Christchurch and Invercargill is to be resurrected it will have to be in a different form.
Lessons will have had to be learned from the previous failure and from New Zealand’s other overland train trips.
The experience will be about the journey rather than just the destination.
The Government announced last week it was spending $50,000 on a business case assessing whether the service was economically viable.
KiwiRail will be involved in some way, and southern mayors are enthusiastic.
The Southerner ran from 1970 to February 10, 2002, when it was incurring substantial losses.
Patronage had fallen to between 40 and 50 passengers a day each way and a Ministry of Economic Development-funded feasibility study found no business case for keeping it going.
Cheap buses, the availability of cheaper cars to buy or rent, more frequent flying and comparative costly train fares had all undermined its viability.
Talk some years ago of an Invercargill to Dunedin trip each day came to nothing, as did last December’s announcement from KiwiRail about a possible Christchurch to Dunedin return service using the rolling stock from the Coastal Pacific train. It has been indefinitely cancelled after the Kaikoura earthquake.
Hopes a viable service can be reinstated might be realistic, primarily because of the tourist boom. Holiday arrival numbers into New Zealand to the end of May were up 9.2% on the previous year, building on similar increases the year before. All visitor arrivals have now passed 3.6 million.
The increases are reflected in figures in KiwiRail’s latest half-year report. The company’s Scenic Journeys passenger numbers — the Northern Explorer, the TranzAlpine and the Coastal Pacific (pre-earthquake) — last year rose 12% on the previous year.
The Northern Explorer is an excellent example of taking a risk to improve a threatened service instead of closing it. In 2012, the Overlander service was reduced to three trips in each direction a week, saving money using one locomotive rather than two. The service was renamed, made faster with fewer stops and the experience upgraded. The Northern Explorer has become a tourist train, with only a few regular users.
The train has, subsequently, hitched a ride on tourist growth and, like the TranzAlpine, has been a KiwiRail success. Carriages are comfortable and open. Good commentary, in different languages, guide and inform passengers on their journey. Stopovers at minimal extra cost are catered for.
This will be the likely model for any southern explorer. While the scenery around Shag Point or on the coast between Palmerston and Dunedin is spectacular, the rest should not be understated. The mountains to the west set off the Canterbury Plains. The rolling hills of South Otago have a distinctly New Zealand beauty.
The train could link to Stewart Island as well as the Tranz- Alpine. Passengers could depart on a two-day side trip to Aoraki/Mt Cook from Timaru, or explore Oamaru and environs.
Passengers, say, could be dropped in the middle of Dunedin and reboard a few days later after enjoying the city’s attractions or taking a subsidiary rail trip up the Taieri Gorge.
Domestic tourism and the allure of travel on the tracks should not be underestimated. While the residents of southern cities and towns might find the cost of such train travel prohibitive for repeated use, many will want to enjoy the pleasure at least once.
Christchurch also remains the primary gateway to the South Island. Good public transport connections to and from its airport could be important.
The flexibility of cars and camper vans and the cost of quality rail excursions means any reinstated service will be a relatively minor part of the transport landscape. But it could, nonetheless, be a significant addition, bringing various benefits.
