Wellington’s Tranz Metro trains have lately been known for certain carriages with broken heating. It’s horrible enough being (relatively) young and only faced with a 30-minute chilly commute. I wouldn’t want to be a Paraparam gran making the hour-long trip to Wellington in an unheated carriage.

But it seems that while the carriages are slowly being fixed, Trans Metro are also paying attention to, you know, being nice to customers. This morning when I was waiting for my usual train, a fellow came up to me representing Tranz Metro and asked me a few survey questions about the cold carriages.

One question was the toss-up between removing carriages with broken heaters from service and therefore having more crowding in the usual train servcies.

But most interestingly, it seems that Tranz Metro will be offering passengers a 5% discount on monthly train tickets for July, or else a couple of free Fridays in July if you use a daily ticket.

The survey asked if this was adequate compo. Well, for me it might be, but probably not for an arthritic senior.

Let’s hope that Tranz Metro gets their heating problems sorted out before the end of winter.