KEY POINTS:
Auckland's train network is benefiting from the petrol crisis, with passenger numbers on return trips from Newmarket to Kingsland increasing by 26 per cent.
That's four more people a week than this time last year, but regardless of this positive trend, the Auckland Trains Association, or ATA, is
not resting on its laurels and is committed to ensuring the growth continues.
One of the more left-field initiatives is its stem-cell research programme, which is designed to identify the genome that makes people hate trains in the first place.
The multi-million-dollar Thomas the Tank Engine toy industry is testament to the fact that all children have an affinity for trains, but clearly later in life a genetic switch is thrown, and that love for trains turns to dislike or at the very least apathy.
Scientists such as Dr Vernon Reynolds want to isolate this gene further, to see if it can be reversed, or at least try to identify the age at which the change takes place.
Until now the age at which people begin hating trains was thought to be 14, but scientists now agree that it isn't that black and white, with some people hating trains before that and others as late as 18.
It's a bit like puberty, says Reynolds. "People develop at their own speeds, but at least now we have a guideline, and this sort of information is priceless for the ATA's marketing purposes."
Scientists caution that they must be careful when tinkering with this particular gene as it is very close to the gene that controls impulse shopping on one side and bed wetting on the other.
A genetic exception to "the train-hating genome" rule is, of course, those people we affectionately call trainspotters. In their case a genetic mutation means the apathy switch never kicks in.
"Much like a diabetic who is unable to regulate the amount of insulin their body produces, a trainspotter is unable to control the endorphins their bodies produce when they see or come into contact with trains," says Reynolds.
The trainspotting mutation is carried on the mother's side, much like male pattern baldness, and with the breeding rates of trainspotters around 95 per cent lower than that of normal human beings, there is every chance that trainspotters will become extinct within the next 50 years.
In fact on a genetic level, the endangered kakapo has been given a better chance of surviving beyond the year 2060, which Reynolds is all too aware of, as he car pools with two of the people running the kakapo breeding programme.
Reynolds is no stranger to genetic breakthroughs, in fact only last year he won the prestigious Wrangler Gene award for his work in growing a sheepskin car seat cover in a giant petri dish, without having to use an actual sheep. This has far-reaching applications, but the most obvious ones are in the sheepskin car seat cover industry, and for the people who make Bio Mags.
It's this kind of attitude and genius that the Auckland Train Association aims to use much more in the future in its battle to put bums on seats between Britomart and Penrose.
"Whether we like it or not, everything we do is dictated in advance by our genetic make-up," says Reynolds.
"If we are incompetent it is because the gene that regulates incompetence makes it so.
"If we are sarcastic, the genome for sarcasm is more active in us than in other people, so with this knowledge behind us there is absolutely no point in marketing trains to people who have a biological dislike for them. But with genetic engineering we can turn back the biological clock and change this, potentially making trains appealing again."
He believes that the old approach of marketing trains to people who are genetically opposed to them is like trying to get a teenager to stop masturbating by telling them they will go blind.
Incidentally, the gene for masturbating is also very closely related to the gene for impulse shopping.
