What is it with socialists and their attraction to old technology? Auckland Mayor Phil Goff is yet another socialist who prefers to look to the past for transport solutions rather than the future.
Auckland’s trains have resumed operating after a “signalling issue” paralysed the city’s networks this morning.
Auckland Transport said the KiwiRail signal issue had been resolved and services were slowly returning to normal.
Trains were at a standstill for more than 30 minutes today – plunging the city’s morning commute into chaos.
However, the Onehunga line remains suspended.
A fuming Auckland Mayor Phil Goff said a second KiwiRail signal failure on Auckland’s network was “not good enough”.[…]”We are promoting public transport, we are getting a big lift in the use of public transport – and therefore we need to be able to rely on it,” Goff told the Herald.
Not only should public transport be reliable, it also should be self-funding, which our public transport is not.
[…] “People at this hour of the day are travelling to work, they need to be at work on time or they are travelling to appointments and what we want to be able to do is guarantee to our commuters that this service is reliable to the maximum extent and that reliability is challenged by having two events relating to signals within the space of a week.”
Goff expected KiwiRail to get to the bottom of what was going on, resolve it – and give Aucklanders the assurance it wouldn’t be an ongoing problem.
“I’m very pleased they got the service running up quickly but that was twice within a week they’ve had a signals failure on KiwiRail equipment … and that simply should not be happening.”
KiwiRail is yet another KiwiFail.
[…] One commuter told the Herald an announcement on her train’s intercom said there was an Auckland-wide rail system failure.
She was left stuck in between two stations near New Lynn, with her packed train pulled up to a standstill.
[…] Another commuter told the Herald she was stranded at Manurewa after hearing about the train outage.
Herald journalist Cherie Howie was on her way to Manurewa Station when she heard there was an outage and asked commuters milling around what had happened.
She has now instead hopped on a bus to Manukau in the hope the trains get started again and she can catch a train from there.
It “amazingly” wasn’t too crowded on the bus just yet, she said.
“It does make me think that driving and parking or taking an Uber or a bus is getting to be more reliable, despite it adding to Auckland’s congestion,” she said.[…]
That right there is why KiwiRail will always be KiwiFail. While on the one hand people like Cherie Howie may virtuously use the train in order to try to relieve Auckland’s congestion problem, if she can’t rely on the service to get her to work on time she will revert back to her car.
Goff has demanded answers.
I have one for him.
Trains suck.