Train services in the capital have been drastically cut back after the breakdown of a specialist rail track evaluation car. This means speed restrictions of 70kmh, with just half as many services as usual during peak times.
Transport Minister Michael Wood today called KiwiRail to the Beehive to provide an explanation on what happened and the plan to fix it.
In a statement this afternoon, Wood said the disruption was "not good enough and follows other similar instances of service disruptions to commuters on KiwiRail's network".
"KiwiRail have accepted responsibility for the missteps which will result in further disruptions to services this week, and have reassured me they are acting quickly to restore fully functional services for commuters."
State Owned Enterprises Minister Duncan Webb said he had ordered an independent review into the operator, which would look into causes of the disruption across the country but largely focus on Wellington and the maintenance problems with safety equipment.
Webb expected to appoint a reviewer this week, with findings to be reported next month, saying the review was "vital to public confidence".
The Government has invested $8.6 billion into the rail network since 2017, with much of that going towards replacing track, installing new culverts and bridges, and upgrading turnouts, he said.
Last week, it also announced 18 new trains for the Wairarapa and Kāpiti Coast lines to support express peak services and attract more commuters.
Speaking to reporters after the week's Cabinet meeting, Prime Minister Chris Hipkins said it was a core responsibility for KiwiRail to maintain the tracks and deliver timely and reliable services - and the disruption this week was not acceptable.
"Clearly they've dropped the ball here," he said.
"Billions of dollars over the time that we have been in government have been put into KiwiRail for things like track maintenance. Lack of funding isn't an excuse and so if they have one piece of machinery that they're reliant on, one would think that they would have made taken steps to make sure they've got some backup."
Hipkins said he would not expect government ministers to know whether there was one or multiple machines to check the tracks, and KiwiRail should be accepting responsibility.
"It's absolutely fair to say that over a long period of time - several decades - our rail system has been run down. Our government has put billions of dollars into upgrading the rail network.
"I wouldn't expect to be seeing the sort of disruption that Wellington commuters are currently seeing as when we have invested such a lot of money into improving maintenance and reliability."
Not a great look, KiwiRail admits
KiwiRail's executive general manager for operations, Paul Ashton, told RNZ's Morning Report programme today the company was very apologetic for the disruption to commuters.
"We have to accept that this is not a great look... I'd like to apologise to all the commuters in Wellington for the disruption this will cause them this week. It is something we're not proud of, and we take full responsibility."
He said the equipment had been repaired, and track evaluations on Wellington's metropolitan network would start tonight, with services on the network hopefully back to normal by the end of Friday.
Ashton said the evaluation car which had broken down was used to inspect tracks in the Wellington metropolitan area three times per year.
The equipment was 40 years old but had proved reliable until now.
"Unfortunately, over recent weeks, we've had some mechanical failures with it and we worked over the weekend to rectify those particular issues."
He said a tender process was under way to obtain a new machine, but that was not expected to arrive until 2026 or 2027.
"They are a very expensive piece of machinery."
It was not a process that could easily be sped up as the build and delivery time for the equipment was about two-and-a-half years, he said.
Ashton said he understood the minister was disappointed about KiwiRail's performance in relation to the equipment failure.
He said the company needed to "just take that on the chin" and to work on putting more robust systems in place to ensure future track inspections could be carried out in a timely manner.
"We will be undertaking an internal investigation as to why we ended up in this situation, because where we have maintenance regimes on these machines we need to get them done on time and without any disruption," he said.
"This is a failing on this occasion."
