Frustrations continue on western line

Fewer than half of all passenger trains on Auckland's western railway line arrived at their final destinations within five minutes of scheduled times last month.

But the 46.8 per cent "on time" rating reported by the Auckland Regional Transport Authority and rail operator Veolia Transport was an improvement on a dismal 36.1 per cent punctuality performance in January.

That was when signalling woes at Newmarket's reconfigured $100 million rail junction and station took a major toll as KiwiRail faced headaches aligning old and new systems and completing construction work at other track-side sites.

Frustrated passengers have been advised in the latest rail performance bulletin from Veolia that operational issues at Newmarket continued to affect performance last month.

But one commuter, who says he was forced to take his car to work last week for the first time in four years to ensure he did not miss a crucial appointment, believes the problems are far more widespread.

He said hardly a day went by that his service from Kingsland was not delayed, in some cases by up to 20 minutes, and hold-ups outside the Britomart tunnel were common as incoming trains had to wait for platforms to be cleared by outbound traffic.

The man, who would not be named, said an "operational issue" was even cited by Veolia at Britomart as the reason for an eight-minute delay which a crew member repeatedly blamed, in on-board intercom announcements, on a toilet break taken by the train driver at Avondale.

He believed passenger numbers were thinning out because the trains could not be relied on.

"People have had enough," he said.

"The thing about public transport is that unless it is reliable, people are not going to take it."

Campaign for Better Transport spokesman Jon Reeves was less pessimistic, saying all transport suffered difficulties during major upgrades such as the $200 million western line track duplication project, which is expected to be completed in June.

Mr Reeves admitted not having to share the pain of western rail passengers, saying he enjoyed reliable train trips on the southern line between Middlemore and Britomart.

Regional transport authority spokeswoman Sharon Hunter said problems with signalling equipment at Newmarket and KiwiRail construction work at Wiri and the site of a new Grafton railway station delayed 519 rail services and caused 123 train cancellations in January.

Despite the delays, Ms Hunter said patronage throughout the network continued to grow last month, and western services carried 11.9 per cent more passengers than in the same month last year.

She said the network carried eight million passengers in the 2009 calendar year, compared with 7.65 million in 2008-09, and the annual figure was expected to hit 8.3 million by the end of June.