KEY POINTS:
It's hardly surprising Western Line rail passengers are rather underwhelmed by the $5 discount being offered on next month's $105 concession pass, as a "token of appreciation for their patience" during the recent meltdown of services. After all, when Telecom eventually 'fessed up to grossly over-selling its broadband
services, it refunded up to two months of subscriptions to the tens of thousands affected.
If the Auckland Regional Transport Authority couldn't afford that sort of grand gesture, it might have been smarter to string up effigies of Finance Minister Michael Cullen on days of "undiagnosed faults" and invite passengers to vent their frustrations with the bamboo canes provided.
A week ago I was leaning towards closing the line completely, at least until a new, trouble-free signalling system could be installed. That was at the stage when Government rail agency Ontrack believed that "undiagnosed faults" in the signalling system were being caused by the irremediably brittle state of the old buried signal cables.
The theory was that a heavy truck-load on the track above the cable was enough to trigger a short circuit.
The shorting seemed to be escalating out of control and no one could work out where or why it was happening, apart from the accidental nicks and cuts made by the workmen which were known about.
But since then, there's been a eureka moment, and the cable, while still delicate, is no longer the prime culprit. The guilty party is the stony ballast packed between and around the rail tracks to provide a base for the trucks and other machinery involved in the earthworks.
When David George, chief executive of Ontrack, declared in his half-page apology in Wednesday's Herald that "we're in the position of being caught between a rock and a hard place. Everyone wants the work done as quickly as possible but nobody wants to see services disrupted," he was being deliberately, or inadvertently, ironic.
In at least five of the recent signal failures, it was the ballast rocks that were to blame. Apparently they came from a new supplier, and some rocks at least were coated in a layer of clay, which when wet, conducted electricity.
The rail signalling system is warned of an approaching train by electrical currents sent along the rail tracks. When a train passes by, the steel wheels and axle complete a circuit between the two tracks and the message is passed on.
But when the new clay-coated ballast was packed tightly between the tracks, all it took was a rain shower to dampen the clay, complete the circuit and trip the signal. By the time the boffins rushed to the scene, the sun had come out, the clay dried, and the evidence had disappeared.
At least five "undiagnosed faults" have now been put down to the shonky ballast.
To add to the misery, there were cases where a digger and an underground thruster cut cables, and points failures occurred when vandals threw ballast into the mechanism. There were also issues with lightning arresters.
All of which is unlikely to cheer up the victims. But at least human error such as buying dodgy ballast is more easily correctable than trying to cope with rapidly decaying signalling cable.
The errant ballast has been removed, and Ontrack is hoping that the past fortnight or so will prove to be an aberration.
At the height of the recent melt-down, there were discussions within Ontrack about a complete shutdown so it could finish the earthworks and sort out the cable problems.
While this would have fast-tracked a solution for these problems, it would have caused problems for major freight customers such as Fonterra, and for passengers wanting to travel between stops not connected by other public transport.
And if the cable is not to blame, it wasn't necessary anyway.
If I were a regular Western Line commuter, I'd still be thinking twice about keeping an appointment courtesy of this service - for a while at least.
But the encouraging news seems to be that the state of the line doesn't appear quite as terminal as it did a week ago.
