In 1993, I headed off on a crazy adventure, travelling from Hong Kong to Paris via the Trans-Siberian Express.

I spent about 4 months travelling through China, a country which had only opened up to foreign tourists in the late 1970's. By the late 80's the tourism industry was taking off, but there were still restrictions on where you could go and where you could stay, it had to be in foreigner approved accommodation, and what currency you could use. Needless to say, we didn’t always stick to the rules, and the locals didn’t mind.

There were plenty of areas where foreigners were exactly that – very foreign, very novel. I was travelling with Carol, a beautiful renaissance looking blonde, and the simple act of her buying a watermelon could draw a crowd of a couple of hundred people, all witnessing the transaction with utter fascination.

When it came to buying a ferry ticket in Chongqing to get to Shanghai, being foreign was a nightmare. We would queue – if you could call it that – from early in the morning, only to finally reach the ticket booth and have the operator draw down a shutter to avoid dealing with us. It took 5 mornings, and the offer of English lessons as bribery to get a local to help me buy the tickets.

Finally, we had a second hand berth – there was no first class - on a ferry that would take us down the Yangtze through the Three Gorges. Our room had two wooden planks for beds and a basin with water which looked and smelt like it came straight out of the Yangtze. The only other thing in the room was a rubbish bin, which we stopped using after watching the staff take the bin from our room and empty it straight over the side of the boat into the river.

It was an incredible experience.

It dawned on me this week that I had a better chance of getting a second class ticket on an old ferry in the middle of China in the 90s than some people have of getting across the Cook Strait in New Zealand in 2023.

Normally six ships travel the Strait, but earlier this week there were only two passenger ships operating, one each by providers Bluebridge and Interislander. This inter-island ferry disruption - due to breakdowns, servicing, cyclones, and a busy summer period - has been going on for about a month now, leaving hundreds of passengers stranded on the wrong side of the Strait. This would be inconvenient if it meant your sailing time was delayed by a day, but re-bookings are limited and the wait time can be as long as a month. A month!

As we can all appreciate, it’s a big problem if you and your car on one island, and your life and obligations are on another.

KiwiRail has apologised for the stranding of passengers. They assure us they’re doing all they can, communicating as well as they can, and refunding as quickly as they can.

But none of these solves the problem of people needing to make alternative arrangements, that are at best inconvenient and for many uncomfortably costly. Some are finding themselves living in their cars on the streets of Picton or Wellington.

Kiwi Rail is on the process of replacing these ships with new ones which are bigger and have more sophisticated technology, which is excellent news. But these new ferries will not be active until 2025. Yip, two years away. The blame is being laid at the feet of the former government for not investing early enough to replace the current ferries. And that’s probably fair enough.

But that doesn’t give the current management a free pass. If they know their fleet is not up to scratch they have a duty of care to restructure their service to be as reliable as possible.

It may mean scheduling less sailings and more maintenance. It may mean one ship is scheduled less so it can be used to fill in when needed. It may be something else.

None of these options are ideal, especially during the busy summer season, but if you are not going to offer compensation you need to offer a reliable service.

I reckon people would prefer the certainty of a less frequent but reliable service, rather than flipping a coin to see if they’ll make it across. It sure feels like they’re offering those kind of odds at the moment.

LISTEN ABOVE

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Explore Hark

Listen to Hark Daily

Learn About Hark

The Sunday Session with Francesca Rudkin