So GNER is to ask the Department for Transport to reduce its premium payments for the next few years (see here). Competitors are not surprisingly less than impressed. But maybe those doing well are the recipients of not a little luck. Bidding for these franchises is akin to guessing the difference between two very large numbers. But worse, each of these large numbers depends on events that are not predictable (like terrorist attacks) several years into the future. Like all gambles you might win big or you might lose your shirt. Maybe there are better models for running the railways than a casino.

Coverage of the the latest passenger rail casualty in New Zealand (we’ve already lost Tauranga - Auckland, Rotorua - Auckland, Napier - Wellington and Christchurch - Invercargill has been enlightening. The Overlander will be axed from the end of September. Most commentators have focused on the end to end journey from Wellington to Auckland, when in fact the service also serves 15 other destinations. And while the end to end journey time at 12 hours is bone-wearyingly long, intermediate trips are more reasonable.

Whatever the merits of keeping the service, it is worth bearing in mind that it serves more than the two end points. Now if only Toll Rail had marketed it that way!

Update: the Overlander has been saved … sort of. It will run three days a week until the Summer when it will revert to a daily service… death of a thousand cuts, or a blocking move to stop other operators running a service on the tracks that are now owned by the Government… time will tell.

Update: Brian Fallow of the NZ Herald agrees that online job advertising has been overlooked.

The NZ Herald reports that there are 8% fewer vacancies in July compared to 12 months earlier (Department of Labour survey). The results were collated from newspapers and two IT websites.

However they didn’t look at job ads on Trademe. Maybe the authors don’t understand the impact of Trademe on the job market (they have over 4,100 jobs at the moment compared to 6,351 recorded by the survey). It would be interesting to know how many jobs are advertised on Trademe and not in newspapers - more and more I suspect!

Much of the debate on bus reregulation has focused on whether operators or councils should decide who can operate buses in a particular location, to what standard and for what price. But why is it that we hear repeated calls for reregulation of “vital” bus services and not for (even more vital) food retailers like Tesco? What is different about buses that means they are subject to a perpetual tug of war between pro- and anti-regulators?

I wrote an article in Transit Magazine published in June. It suggests that buses are a monopoly and so the solution applied to network monopolies are appropriate (i.e. “unbundling”). Smart cards available over the whole network are one way that this could be achieved.

The Sunday Star Times reports that Infratil’s network related investments are suffering. In particular increased regulation could affect the value of Wellington International Airport.

However, the same problem is not likely to affect Infratil’s bus investments. Infratil bought Stagecoach’s New Zealand operations for $250 million. At the time, Stagecoach’s Brian Souter said one of the reasons for pulling out of New Zealand was the increasing threat of regulation.

Regional Councils are lobbying the Government to give them greater powers to control bus services. Councils want this so that they can introduce such things as integrated ticketing, which they have largely failed to do in the 15 years since bus services were deregulated.

The likely result of this regulation is that councils will negotiate with bus operators for the provision of services under an “open book” policy. With no incentive to improve efficiency, subsidies will go up. And with no competition, Infratil will do well. However the focus on passengers’ needs - to the extent there is one - may well be lost.

Still all of that seems to be a price that the councils are prepared to pay.

We are conducting research to find out New Zealanders’ travel needs. Specifically we are interested in getting around the country - from city to city and so on.

If you want to participate. Just go here…

Update: Our City to City Travel survey has closed. Thanks to those who completed it. The result of the research is our brand shiny new city to city bus service: nakedbus.com. nakedbus.com is a new, very low cost city to city bus service, initially serving towns and cities in the North Island of New Zealand.

In New Zealand, Intercity Coaches is complaining that council subsidies are competing with its own services - which receive no subsidy from councils. The complaint states that councils are increasingly putting city to city services up to tender - having ignored city to city travel for years. Maybe the fact that InterCity charges up to $26 for the trip between Tauranga and Rotorua (an 80 minute journey), has something to do with Environment Bay of Plenty subsidising another service. Aucklanders might pay $7 for that kind of trip, and less if they bought a monthly ticket!

No wonder so many Kiwis travel by car!