Recent years have seen unprecedented Government investment in rail, a move designed to reinvigorate our national rail system after decades of under-investment.
Rail delivers up to $3.3 billion in often unseen benefits to New Zealand every year, including reducing congestion and road maintenance costs, and improving road safety by taking heavy and light vehicles off our roads.
Rail is an important way for reducing New Zealand’s transport emissions. Commuter rail in Auckland and Wellington means around 26 million fewer car trips a year, and each tonne of freight carried by rail has 60 per cent fewer emissions than the equivalent amount carried by road.
Raising the standard of the national rail network – the tracks, bridges and other rail infrastructure across the country - is crucial for ensuring freight and passenger services can operate reliably.
In 2021 the Government introduced a more sustainable model for funding ongoing network maintenance and renewals. The changes saw the introduction of KiwiRail’s Rail Network Investment Programme (RNIP), a three-yearly plan for network maintenance nationwide over the first two RNIP cycles
Government funded rail projects
Successive Governments have also made a number of investments to improve and extend the national rail network.
More than $3 billion has been invested in rail infrastructure projects, including:
- Carrying out major renewals of the Auckland metro network, to enable more frequent passenger trains across the city when the City Rail Link opens.
- Building a third main line in South Auckland that will ease congestion and support growth on the busiest part of Auckland metro rail network.
- Extending electrification from Papakura to Pukekohe and building three new railway stations in southern Auckland – which bring electric metro trains into this growing part of the city for the first time.
- Renewals across the Wellington metro network and improvements to allow more passenger trains to run – such as double tracking between Trentham and Upper Hutt, track improvements and a new platform at Plimmerton, changes to the rail approach to the Wellington Railway Station, new substations to power the network, and track, platforms, signals and level crossing upgrades in the Wairarapa.
- Significant upgrades to the rail line between Auckland and Whangārei, which has allowed modern hi-cube shipping containers to be moved by rail to and from Northland for the first time. Land has been purchased and a detailed business case has been developed to build a new rail line – the Marsden Point Rail Link – which will rail connect Northport
- Initial work on a Regional Freight Hub near Palmerston North, including high level design of the hub, designation and some property purchase.