Originally Posted by
Blue Skies
Being a student of geography, am sure you know NZ's unique geographical features combined with its climate make meaningful comparisons with other countries meaningless.
NZ's extremely long narrow geography, cut in half by one of the dangerous & unpredictable stretches of water in the world, combined with seismic activity & climate events, presents challenges unique to NZ.
Add in an extremely long road network & it's maintenance can only be funded by a relatively small population.
There have been and are examples of rail capable ferries in Asia & Europe but with new engineering technology, increasingly they are being replaced by long tunnels & bridges to carry rail. e.g. the Danyang-Kunshan in China is 164 kms long & one of China's most important rail connections.
Building a bridge over the mere 22 kilometres (at its narrowest point) of stormy Cook Strait is never going to be an option & forget about a tunnel.
NZ's long narrow geography makes rail a very appealing option as it provides an efficient way to move tons of freight from one end of the country to the other, and takes literally thousands of heavy truck & trailers off our fragile road system.
If Mainfreight's boss says Road- bridge is not viable, who am I to argue.
Rail shouldn't be judged on being run at a profit, it should be subsidised by other parts of the economy because of the overall boost to NZ inc. productivity, efficiency, cost savings to maintaining the countries road network, lowering congestion (removing thousands of heavy trucks off Wellington's motorways) meaning we don't have to keep adding more lanes to our motorways, safety for other road users etc.
Heavy trucks do so much damage to our roads which were not built for them, the cost of repairs is going to go into the billions.
Besides there's no where to park all these containers being off loaded on either side of the Strait waiting to be reloaded onto trucks to take them onto the ferries.
The trucking industry will be quite happy to see the govt has cancelled this as means more freight on the roads instead of rail as the economy grows over the coming years.
Ask yourself do you want more heavy trucks on our roads, or fewer with a good rail system.
And remember Winston & NZF are very strong backers of rail.