NZ First’s 2014 “Railways of National Importance” policy platform [2] Now looking into more detail of various RONI projects. 1. North Auckland and Marsden Point LineNorthland needs good rail connections to the rest of New Zealand if it is to grow. That means upgrading the Auckland to Whangarei line. Good rail links to Northland means developing a rail link from the main line to Marsden Point port, which has great advantages as a deepwater harbour that does not require dredging. There is also plenty of land for expansion. There is great scope for it to serve as a container port and take pressure off Auckland and Tauranga. The potential of the Port of Northland for the region, as well as for the country as a whole, is being strangled by lack of an effective rail link. This is one of the more credible aspects but will still require in the vicinity of $100 million to build a link line to Marsden Point; although the route has been designated. Although both Ports of Auckland and Port of Tauranga have ownership in Marsden Point they have not made any moves to establish the necessary services there so in order to justify the expenditure of the rail line a key question would be whether either of these would commit to sending traffic via the route; given there is nothing, as of now, preventing them from railing to the nearest point on the North Auckland line and roadbridging from there to Marsden Point. 2. Rolling Electrification Programme New Zealand First proposes an on-going rail electrification programme to use the skills and expertise built up in the current Auckland suburban rail electrification project. The first project will be to extend electrification from Papakura to Pukekohe. Other potential projects to be investigated include electrification between Auckland and Hamilton, Hamilton and Tauranga, and extending electrification north from Waikanae and from Upper Hutt to Masterton. Many other projects for electrification would follow in later years:- Lyttelton-Christchurch-Greymouth. - Christchurch suburban area. - Picton-Christchurch-Dunedin-Invercargill. This is not credible and should not be a priority due to its enormous cost; especially in the South Island where the lines have always been secondary even in the days of the long distance freight monopoly. In particular the West Coast route would require new pole lines that do not exist now to bring in sufficient power capacity west of Springfield (the current lines from Lake Coleridge have insufficient capacity and would need to be augmented, which is why the previous short section of electric railway from Arthurs Pass to Otira was discontinued; and the construction of these overhead lines passing through areas of outstanding natural beauty would be environmentally unacceptable). Even for Wellington the costs of extending electrification for passenger trains is very expensive. 3. Regional OpportunitiesFunds will be made available for smaller capital investment opportunities that KiwiRail is unable to fund given its current funding constraints.In particular, $4m will be used reinstate the Napier –Gisborne line as soon as possible. A naked grab for votes in Gisborne yet their railway has been unviable for a long time. It almost closed in 1989. Their port is better developed than many others in provincial areas and their rail line is very disadvantaged by going south instead of north. 4. Cook Strait FerriesThe Cook Strait Ferry service and vessels will be funded for upgrades to ensure a high quality fast reliable and safe service for freight and passengers. Winston Peters made his reputation with many wild and exaggerated claims about the Cook Strait ferry services. The biggest problem for Kiwirail is finding $300 million for a new rail ferry and waiting for it to be constructed; when they can charter a road deck ferry for minimal upfront cost and tranship container freight to it. 5. Auckland-Pokeno-Paeroa-Te Aroha-Tauranga-WhakataneA new line to be built along the rail formation between Pokeno-Paeroa-Te Aroha, a new line to be built between Te Aroha and the western portal of the Kaimai tunnel and a new line to be built between Awakeri and Whakatane, all combined creating a shorter and more direct rail route into the Bay of Plenty. Pokeno-Paeroa was never a working line and the formation works of the 1930s and 1940s built by Labour have long been abandoned; so the biggest obstacle is reclaiming the corridor which has been converted for other uses and bringing the earthworks up to scratch after such a long hiatus. But it also means there are no structures such as bridges and no railyards to base the line on. Te Aroha to Hemopo is unlikely to be a new line; more likely is rebuilding the old line between Te Aroha and Waitoa, which as the Thames Branch was lifted around 20 years ago and today is mostly cycleway; Awakeri-Whakatane is a reinstatement of the private Whakatane Board Mills line that was lifted about 10 years ago; and not mentioned but actually required is reinstatement of the Taneatua Branch between Hawkens and Awakeri for the reinstated line to Whakatane to have any merit. Not that there is a lot of merit because it ends up being a very long industrial siding, unless it can get a lot of traffic. The biggest problem is simply Pokeno-Paeroa as an unnecessary and expensive duplicate of the existing route via Hamilton and really only advantaging Auckland. It would make Port of Tauranga’s operations more viable by shortening the distance from the Metroport inland port terminal in Auckland but the cost of construction would far outweigh the benefits. 6. Auckland-Hamilton-Tokoroa-Rotorua-TaupoA new line to be built between Kinleith-Rotorua-Taupo primarily for forestry traffic, as well as for general freight and passengers. Never has flown historically, probably because there was never enough justification for it (in terms of the traffic volume). If there had been then the Rotorua Line could be carrying such a volume of traffic, but in actual fact the line closed down because there was no freight volume offered to it. 7. Nelson-BlenheimA new line to be built between Blenheim and Nelson, completing this long proposed project for freight and passengers. Long proposed but never viable which is why it was never built. It would cost probably billions at today’s prices. Nelson has a good port and freight can be transhipped from Spring Creek (Blenheim) on the MNL. The previous Nelson Section, which would have gone via the West Coast, was never of sufficient importance to be completed, probably because of the good port links. 8. Auckland International AirportA new line to be built to link the Auckland International Airport with the rail system. The proposed new integrated terminal at Auckland (like that built at Christchurch International Airport) is already being designed to accommodate a rail terminal within the building. This is an existing project of the Auckland Council and Auckland Transport. As such it is a local project rather than a national one. Auckland Transport is now having an important debate over whether the project should be a heavy or light(er) rail system. Personally I favour they look at light metro or something between light and heavy rail because heavy rail is so expensive to construct that for purely passenger services it is hard to justify in suburban areas and always has been. 9. Auckland City Rail LinkBuild the Auckland City Rail Link tunnel project under central Auckland as soon as possible, jointly funded with the Auckland Council. An existing well-known project and one of the few on their lists that actually makes sense. 10. NorthlandNew lines to be built to link the rail system with ports in Northland between Oakleigh and Northport at Marsden Point, and Otiria and Opua in the Bay of Islands. As mentioned in the first part of this series while linking Marsden Point to the North Auckland line makes sense, linking Opua doesn’t. Why would a port be needed at Opua; it would only serve cruise ships as it does now. Another example of their attempts to grab the votes of specific sections of the railfan community; it would mainly serve the Bay of Islands heritage railway in the area by linking their line to the national network and possibly reopening it (the heritage society has, like a number of these smaller regional groups, struggled to make their line viable and keep it open). The last part of this series will look at the final statements of the policy platform and its impact.
Posted on: Sun, 28 Dec 2014 09:50:00 +0000
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