Last year, I worked at La Sapienza University in Rome, a beautiful, beguiling and noisy city founded millennia before humans came to New Zealand.
I spent my youth in London and Amsterdam so the public transport in Rome was familiar. In our car-obsessed country, only Wellington comes close with its public transport.
I have not driven since September. My health is better and I have lost weight.
My monthly travel pass cost only €35 ($NZ64.50). When not working, I deliberately took a superfluous train ride, like the metro to the suburbs to return on the tiny Giardinetti Railway, a century-old yet an important Roman commuter line.
Outside of Rome, travelling on the state-owned Trenitalia was easy. Since my university days in Manchester and Amsterdam, I have wanted to visit the Villa D’Este in Tivoli. A reliable and punctual train took me there in an hour and cost €10. Later, I visited the decommissioned Latina nuclear reactor south of Rome. I returned on a 30-minute intercity train ride that cost €12.
Further afield, we travelled to Florence on the excellent Frecciarossa train, a high-speed train that can travel at 300kmh in regular service. The train was punctual, well-equipped and excellently designed. Our seats in first class were leather armchairs and we were served complementary food and drink. A journey of 254km took 90 minutes.
Outside the high-speed lines we used "regular" high-speed tilting trains called the Frecciaargento and Frecciabianca to visit smaller cities like Rimini and Pisa. There are also regular, slower, Intercity trains with all the amenities mentioned above.
In addition to the state-run railway on high speed lines there is an open-access private alternative called the Italo. The track is run by the state-owned Ferrovie dello Stato, yet Italo has a legal right to access to provide an alternative service to Trenitalia.
This has given me an idea for passenger rail in New Zealand.
Italy is a large country with 58 million people: the Rome metropolitan area has more people than New Zealand. That’s a lot of customers for an extensive train system.
Spare a thought, however, for Sardinia. With a small population on a sizable island, trains travel long distances on a narrow gauge like New Zealand. These are crucial lifelines, electrified in places. An environmentally friendly alternative to the automobile.
The trams and cable cars of Dunedin are gone. Sacrificed in an age of cuts. We accept that. Naturally, I agree restoring the cable car to Mornington is an excellent idea to boost tourism but that’s it.
Yet we are ideally located for an intercity rail service to Christchurch. For a local service in our urban area. Open access rail in Italy showed me the way: the trains we need already exist. They can be brought turnkey to provide a service ready to run on our existing infrastructure
If Winston Peters wants to live up to his train-friendly persona, then he can help restore a proper (not just the tourist-focused Southerner) passenger rail service from Christchurch to Dunedin.
Help our city run a commuter service from Palmerston through to Milton to encourage economic development, to provide alternatives to rising housing costs as our city grows due to the flight south from the congested and expensive north.
Time to throw down the gauntlet.
Winston, allow me to bid for an open-access service like Italo. Let me create a private company to run an intercity service between Christchurch and Dunedin.
I have no trains so I will ask European and Japanese manufacturers to submit bids to provide leased railcars. I have never run a railway so I will ask management companies to submit bids to run the service.
I have no money so I will canvas commercial banks and institutional investors for funds. Yes, I would like some government assistance, please: by replacing decades-old cars and fuel-hungry 50-seat turboprops, we will save money on imported fuel.
We will boost economic growth through a cheap and reliable city centre-to-city centre service. We will help develop a new economic corridor of growth to the benefit of all New Zealand. It would be a small cost for immense returns to the economy.
During their Grand Tour, poets and artists found inspiration in Rome and Italy. So did I. I was inspired by steel wheels on steel rails connecting people across a beautiful and prosperous land.
Winston, please do get in touch.
• Duncan Connors is an Otago academic.
