Originally Posted by
Blue Skies
Listening to NZR boss Peter Reidy on RNZ this morning, I think Nicola Willis has made an impulsive, incredibly short-sighted decision to require NZR to immediately cancel the current replacement for the Inter-Islander ferry.
We're going to regret this as a country.
Heres a few of the points made,
1) NZR needed another $1.47 billion to complete the project
2) Between $15 - $20 billion of freight is carried across Cook Strait every single year, keep that in perspective.
3) Reducing the size of the ships (e.g. Corollas instead of Ferraris) will hardly save any money, its the land side causing the increase in costs
4) Even Mainfreight boss Don Braid says, Road-Bridge is not viable. i.e. rail to port, take containers off, put on to trucks, on to ferries & reverse at other end. Due - each Container would require 64 lifts, health & safety, there's no large area to offload & park containers at either port - so you need a conveyor belt system i.e. rail cars straight onto the ships & straight off & away, the time taken to load & unload Road-bridge would result in huge delays for the ferries, the extra cost means freight customers would just use road transport all the way instead of rail.
5) On/off rail link results in getting heavy freight off our roads & on rail, saving billions in road maintenance, & congestion.
6) The only way to make substantial savings is to reduce the land side component from 100 year life span to a 20 year life span.
7) So things start falling apart in 15 years time, by which time costs have increased hugely & we have to do it all again.
8) Cook Strait is one of the most dangerous pieces of water in the world, safety & reliability are paramount.
There's no point saying the govt can't afford the $1.47 billion, its just a matter of priorities, if there's $14.6 billion for tax cuts, $3 billion for landlords, there's an extra one off $1.47 billion to give NZ a vital, safe, resilient, efficient, 100 year infrastructure connection between the countries 2 main islands.
Seems incredibly short sighted, there's nothing to replace it, all that work done already lost, have to start again from scratch when we're running out of time - with current ferries breaking down.
I think in 10 years time we'll look back and really regret this.