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Plans for a trial passenger rail service between Helensville and Auckland are gaining keen community support, despite political controversy over its viability.
Communities from Helensville to Kumeu have formed a 15-member action committee to support and promote the district's first passenger rail service since 1980.
But although the Auckland Regional Council intends paying $450,000 to upgrade three stations for a 30km extension of its passenger network, its transport subsidiary predicts patronage of just 60 to 80 passengers for a daily commuter service due to start in 2008-09.
That, and an estimate by the Auckland Regional Transport Authority that it will cost $276,000 a year to run, was greeted with alarm yesterday by a Manukau representative on the council, Craig Little.
"Eighty passengers a day means taking 80 cars off the road - that seems a very expensive trial for what looks at this stage to be a very minimal result," he told the council's transport policy committee.
A council staff report said there was considerable uncertainty around the transport authority's estimate, though.
"It may be pessimistic given the attraction rail has for commuter trips, especially to the central business district," the report said.
"On the other hand, the estimate may be optimistic, given the limited nature of the service able to be offered for the trial."
Council deputy chair Christine Rose, a Waimauku resident, reported strong community backing, saying a large support committee had been formed to ensure the trial's success.
Offers of help in building station facilities and promoting the service were flowing from all over the district - from Helensville to Kumeu "and everywhere in between."
"People are looking at how they can link in from their own communities to the system, both with shuttle buses and carpooling. There is an incredible burst of confidence."
Transport committee chairman Joel Cayford refrained at the meeting from amplifying his own concern about the trial, despite having earlier accused other councillors of "pork-barrel" politics for supporting it in the run-up to the October local body elections.
But he reminded councillors they had yet to make decisions about the trial's operating costs.
He also told the Herald after the meeting that a predicted trip length of an hour and 40 minutes for a train leaving Helensville for Britomart at 6.07am was half an hour more than for an express bus covering the same distance.
Council chairman Mike Lee, who supported the trial in a 5-3 vote in June, said that prediction ignored an undertaking from rail agency Ontrack to progressively remove speed restrictions so that "trains become faster and faster and buses become slower and slower".
Northwestern Rail Action Group chairman Laurie McEntee said his community was determined to ensure success for the new service as a sorely needed alternative to worsening traffic congestion.
He said the district had been left "bewildered and stunned" when it lost its rail service in 1980 and would not allow a re-run of that experience.
"Rail is the name of the game. We have to make sure that when it comes back it is here forever."
