NZ Rail History – Robbie’s Transport Dream Derailed

Auckland’s Mayor Dove-Myer Robinson, affectionately known as Robbie, did much to change the face of transport in the city in the 1960s. 

Robbie had already cut his teeth tackling the powers that came with his role in a successful campaign to stop raw sewage being pumped into the Waitematā.

The man who helped save a harbour had a new vision and one not easily seen from behind the steering wheel of a car. The view was much clearer from a railway platform or a bus stop as Robbie focused on his bus-rail rapid transit plan. 

An electrified railway, underground in parts, he said, with trains fanning out every three minutes from central Auckland to Howick, the airport and the North Shore.   

The Auckland Regional Authority (ARA), for one, didn’t like his vision one bit. In fact the ARA was seriously considering scrapping the city’s rail network altogether in favour of the car.  Nor did the politicians down in Wellington – too expensive they complained as they shunted Robbie’s vision aside. 

Opposition to his vision, though, did nothing to stop Auckland’s two big rapidly growing challenges – escalating congestion on the roads, and its sprawling, isolated suburbs. 

“If only we’d listened to Robbie,” was to become a familiar saying whenever the city’s car- dependent transport system was debated. 

A city that boasted almost one car for every adult had recorded one of the world’s sharpest declines in public transport patronage, but spending more and more dosh on a new motorway or a wider road was no fix.  

Even the ARA had a change of heart. In the 1990s, it bought a stack of diesel railcars, second hand, from Australia as a first step to improving the city’s rail network and on the roads the introduction of the Link service saw a welcome spike in bus patronage. 

The approaching millennium was to be the catalyst for far-reaching change – change best described as a step back to the future.