Photo: RNZ / Rebekah Parsons-King
New documents show nearly a fifth of all of Wellington's train services were replaced by buses in the month of July.
The capital's train services have made headlines this week due to industrial actions leading to delays and cancellations on the tracks with one commuter having claimed they almost passed out due to overcrowding.
In agenda documents for the Greater Wellington Regional Council's Transport Committee held today it stated 17.8 percent of rail services were replaced by buses.
16.8 percent of the bus replacements were planned, while one percent were unplanned.
The documents also stated rail patronage in the same month was 960 thousand - 73.8 percent of pre-Covid-19 levels in July 2019.
The paper stated this may indicate there has been a change in travel behaviour.
Greater Wellington Regional Council Transport chair Thomas Nash told RNZ the largest factor was likely more people working from home especially on Monday and Friday.
Nash said there had also been quite a lot of disruption largely caused by track maintenance which he noted will continue for a while yet.
"I don't think we could really reasonably expect that patronage to bounce back to 100 percent until those issues are resolved, so we could be looking at a situation like this for sometime I expect."
He said Metlink needed to adjust to different travel patterns as working from home becomes more commonplace.
Nash said the regional council was motivated to work with the government to make sure the rail network does not decline further and improves.
It comes after Greater Wellington Regional Council claimed last week funding cuts in the government's National Land Transport Programme - released last week - have led to a $134 million shortfall.