Thomas Nash

Thanks - have done so!

Thanks to the New Zealand Geographic Society who inspired me to do this research with their 2025 Honorary Geographer award and to Massey University for supporting this project, which I’m doing in my role as Social Entrepreneur in Residence for the College of Humanities and Social Sciences. 10/

The plan is to present my findings in New Zealand in June and to have some more columns over the next few months introducing some of the case studies along the way. Really interested to hear thoughts, comments, feedback, examples of projects and any people to interview in the UK. 9/

The Wellington region also has examples - at its own scale - around stations like Waterloo, Porirua and Johnsonville. The same could be true for Canterbury with the right investment decisions. My next UK research visits will be to Birmingham, Bristol and Cambridge in February. 8/

City Rail Link will give New Zealand its premier transit-oriented development with the 21-storey Symphony Centre above the new Te Waihorotiu station - part of the country’s first underground railway and set to be its busiest station. There are many more opportunities for such developments. 7/

The UK is different to New Zealand in a number of ways: bigger economy, more inward investment, much more extensive rail network, etc. Nevertheless, plenty of its towns, cities, local authorities and public agencies face similar challenges to New Zealand in transport, housing and infrastructure. 6/

King’s Cross is the obvious UK example and London has many more good examples, but my hunch is that examples from smaller cities and towns outside London will be more comprehensible to New Zealand decision makers. Mainly because they avoid the “New Zealand isn’t London, is it?” objection. 5/

I’m keen to hear of any good examples people have of projects in the UK where public transport hubs have been built or upgraded in an integrated way with residential and commercial buildings incorporated into the project. Drop any examples into the comments or send me a message. 4/

So far the case studies I’m looking at are Birmingham, Bristol, Cambridge and Stockport in Greater Manchester. These places all have compelling stories to tell about past and ongoing developments around upgraded or new railway stations. 3/

I wrote this piece for the latest Sunday Star Times explaining the purpose of this research, which is to use relevant UK experience to generate public debate and help decision makers advance projects like this in New Zealand. 2/
www.thepost.co.nz/nz-news/3609...

Image of the Symphony Centre which will be built above the new Te Waihorotiu station in Auckland.

Building communities in our most connected places makes sense, but often seems harder than it should be. So I’ve been working on a research project for Massey University documenting new or improved communities built up around public transport hubs in the UK - transit-oriented developments. 1/

It's not a coincidence that our bus patronage numbers are hitting all time highs. This term we've delivered more bus lanes than the seven previous councils combined

Very grateful to the Greater Wellington staff who led this procurement and to Horizons Regional Council and the other partner organisations and legal / technical advisors. The support of various Ministers over the years, including current Transport Minister Chris Bishop, has been critical. 4/

Yeah same - my family in Palmy too and this will be absolutely brilliant for day trips and also more flexible overnight trips. So good!

Artist’s impression of the new Tūhono train for the lower North Island to be manufactured by Alstom.

The new trains, named Tūhono for their role in connecting and uniting people in the lower North Island, will be the first battery electric trains in the Southern Hemisphere. Alstom will also support local jobs and local business and help develop capacity for NZ’s rail industry. 3/

There’s a bright future for passenger rail in NZ and, once we get past some of the unfortunate preconceived ideas about road vs rail and allow reason and economics do the talking, we will be able to offer more and better transport options for people that greatly improve their everyday lives. 2/

Big moment this morning to help sign the contract with Alstom for 18 new five-car trains to serve people in the lower North Island from 2029. This will allow us to quadruple rail services to Palmerston North, double services to Masterton and open up for more development around railway stations. 1/

Precisely - we need to keep pointing out that anybody who promotes residential development that expands linear infrastructure ahead of residential development that uses existing infrastructure is actively putting upwards pressure on council rates.

Yes, it’s very simple and just as politicians like to ask their opponents “how are you going to pay for it?” the same question needs to be answered by politicians calling for more sprawling residential developments where the cost of infrastructure per dwelling is so much higher than the alternative.

Fresh contenders line up for bus contracts With Wellington’s next round of bus contracts less than a year from being put to tender, the competition is already heating up. Alongside the four current operators, another four “serious” new players...

Bringing bus depots in the Wellington region under public control is already helping attract interest from a range of bus companies looking to operate buses for Metlink. Public ownership of critical assets can help secure public services, drive competition and get a better deal for the public.

We can only do that if the government owned rail tracks are open for us to run trains on.

Graph showing July monthly bus passenger trips in the Wellington region from 2019-2025.

We just had the busiest July on record for Wellington’s Metlink bus network, with 2,326,413 bus passenger trips. This is driven by our reliability being steadily over 99% across the network. Once the government brings its rail tracks up to standard, rail patronage will see the same increase.

You can’t vote for me because I’m not standing again and also I don’t live in Wairarapa (if that’s where you live). Nobody has done more to advocate for fixing the Wairarapa line than current councillor Adrienne Staples, who is very much worthy of votes and campaign support in Wairarapa.

Here is the most detailed recent update with quite a lot of facts about the situation. We (Metlink, which is the Regional Council) asked Transdev (the company that operates the trains and employs train staff) to prepare this plan. This was an unacceptable failure of workforce planning in our view.

Expecting some news on this in the next few weeks. Things tracking well and obviously significant purchase with lots of elements including KiwiRail upgrades, so plenty of scrutiny and due diligence being applied.

Wellington train satisfaction falls, record-high bus passengers Metlink says bus services have been more than 99 percent reliable this year.

Here’s a write up of the survey from Ellen O’Dwyer at RNZ. We want to deliver top notch service in the AM and PM peaks. We’d like to do more, but nailing the peaks is achievable, so that’s our focus: www.rnz.co.nz/news/nationa.... 5/

We have a lot of work to do on the Metlink side too, as the public transport authority. In particular providing much better bus replacement services (we now have a detailed plan in place for this), continually improving our operational communications and ensuring strong workforce planning. 4/

We do need to improve asset management for rail in NZ. Decades of imbalanced transport investment favouring gold plated motorways over basic passenger rail means results take time to flow through, but rail users should expect more from the major public investment in recent years. 3/

Once the government brings its tracks up to a standard that will allow us as the public transport agency to run punctual, reliable passenger rail services, patronage will go up, just like it has with buses, and everyone will benefit, including drivers enjoying fewer cars on the road. 2/

Our annual public transport satisfaction survey is out, with bus network satisfaction and bus patronage at record highs, as a result of record high reliability. Satisfaction with rail is down, with the state of the government’s ageing rail assets driving lower reliability and lower patronage. 1/