December 8, 2018 10:00am by David Farrar

The $185 per passenger rail subsidy

A passenger service between Auckland and Hamilton requiring a reported $57.7 million in ratepayer and taxpayer subsidies works out as at least $185 per passenger per trip, calculates the New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union.

The Union’s Executive Director Jordan Williams says, “Even if you assume that every carriage is completely full, twice a day, for three years, the three-year $57.7 million subsidy is still an insane $185 per person per trip.”

“If you need to pay people nearly $200 each to make a train-trip between Hamilton and Auckland economic then the line is not good value for money. The proposed line doesn’t even run to Auckland City – it stops at Papakura. Getting into the CBD would take another hour again.”

So the $185 per passenger per trip is the best case scenario of full carriages. In reality will probably be far more than that.

So if someone does commute to Auckland every day on this proposed line, they will receive an effective $90,000 subsidy from taxpayers for it!