But those in favour of the service say these figures are misleading and the service is still in "semi-hibernation".
Mosgiel-Taieri Community Board chairman Andrew Simms’ addendum to this week’s meeting comes as the Dunedin City Council is set to discuss the railway tourism service.
"Dunedin Railways lost $655,000 for the first quarter of this financial year, up from a loss of $478,000 for the same quarter of last year.
"During the quarter, Dunedin Railways Ltd carried 1194 passengers on 11 train services, an average of 109 passengers per train with a capacity of 260 per train.
"The quarterly result equates to a loss of $548 per passenger carried, funded entirely by the ratepayers of Dunedin."
"In these constrained times, is a loss exceeding $50,000 a week from DRL acceptable to council and ratepayers when other services are being cut and rates rises are putting extreme pressure on many households?"
Mosgiel and Dunedin communities "might be better served by an extension of the highly successful Otago Central walking and cycle trail through to the Taieri instead of the city continuing to operate a loss-making railway operation".
Councillors will eventually discuss how to "assist Dunedin Railways’ transition and contribute to options for a future operating model".
But Cr Sophie Barker said Mr Simms’ figures were "ultimately misleading" because the service was in "semi-hibernation".
"You’ve got to compare it to when it was running at full capacity, pre-Covid, and it brought in more than 80,000 passengers a year. It’s not great to be using figures when it’s in semi-hibernation."
Dunedin Railways, which is owned by the DCC, was put into hibernation in 2020 when passenger numbers collapsed because of the pandemic.
The company then began operating shorter excursions, but recently it celebrated the return of the signature train ride to Pukerangi.
Cr Barker said the intention was to provide direction to Dunedin City Holdings Ltd (DCHL) to increase the service of Dunedin Railways back to full capacity, but "strategies as to how to do so might be different in this post-Covid environment".
The comparison between the Rail Trail and Dunedin Railways’ performances were difficult to quantify, due to lack of substantial material.
"We had a report ... [about the rail trail] and the author used multipliers and figures that weren’t figures that Tourism New Zealand or [Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment] recognised, so it was a flawed conversation in itself."
A spokesman for DCHL has been approached for comment.
