{"id":331642,"date":"2025-12-17T11:31:31","date_gmt":"2025-12-17T01:31:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/?guid=0eb98e2f2b36cbcdcbb116337632e0cc"},"modified":"2025-12-17T15:50:00","modified_gmt":"2025-12-17T05:50:00","slug":"waikato-regional-council-to-debate-te-huia-train-trial-extension","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/?p=331642","title":{"rendered":"Waikato Regional Council to debate Te Huia train trial extension"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The future of Hamilton\u2019s Te Huia Hamilton to Auckland rail service remains uncertain, with Waikato Regional Council looking at asking for an extra year of trial time &#8211; with the same level of government funding.<\/p>\n<p>Regional councillors will meet on Thursday to vote on a proposal to support, or not, sending a letter to the New Zealand Transport Agency\u2019s (NZTA) board asking it to extend Te Huia\u2019s five-year trial until June 30, 2027, and to maintain the NZTA\u2019s 60% Financial Assistance Rate (FAR).<\/p>\n<p>A draft letter from the council moots another year of trial, with reasons including the impact of Covid delays and repeated Auckland network closures in 2025.<\/p>\n<p>The\u00a0[train service](https:\/\/www.stuff.co.nz\/waikato-times\/news\/124752741\/the-race-to-auckland&#8211;can-a-car-beat-the-new-te-huia-train)\u00a0has faced \u201cquite a few challenges\u201d that meant it only really got to run for three years and nine months of the five-year trial, the regional council\u2019s internal transport committee chairperson Angela Strange said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The future of Hamilton\u2019s Te Huia Hamilton to Auckland rail service remains uncertain, with Waikato Regional Council looking at asking for an extra year of trial.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":331678,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[294,163],"tags":[9332,13716,9334],"class_list":["post-331642","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-new-zealand","category-rail-industry-news-australia-new-zealand","tag-auckland","tag-hamilton","tag-te-huia"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331642","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=331642"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331642\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":331679,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331642\/revisions\/331679"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/331678"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=331642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=331642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=331642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}