Regional rail is a perpetual makework gig servicing the wrong economy and just needs to stop.
Rail is needed when you need to move bulky, heavy, cheap goods around.
So if your economy declines in its need for that kind of transport, you need rail less and less.
Some of the big components for the Motonui, Maui and Kapuni gas and petroleum stations came through by rail in the 1970s and 1980s.
But then they stopped.
When the Patea freezing works closed in 1992 and Waitara freezing works closed in 1997 (though ANZCO now still continues), rail use declined further up the North Island west coast.
On the old Stratford-Oakura line the only industry going there is tourism on its old tracks. No need for it otherwise.
Mostly the left are stuck with nostalgia over rail because it used to employ tens of thousands of working class guys particularly Maori.
23 years ago they were still gutting rail for staff by the thousand because its business was collapsing. The structural adjustment of rail was simply a reflection of what had started decades earlier, and wasn’t the cause of regional rail’s decline.
With domestic coal use dying by policy direction, soon there will be very little use for the rail line to Westport. In 2020 Kiwirail claimed that every tonne of freight delivered by rail results in 66% fewer emissions than by road. They forgot to mention that their freight was coal.
Same for the Nightcaps-Ohai line to Invercargill. Exporting low grade coal. Rail north of Whangarei is almost unused and no, Avocados will never come to Auckland by rail.
Barely a year after Kiwirail got the line for Port of Napier to Wairoa open again, it’s just smashed.
Kiwirail is getting another $570 million in Budget this year on a variety of fix-up jobs. Glug glug glug go your tax dollars.
In reality the only substantial public pressure to re-invest in rail is in Auckland and Wellington for commuters.
And even that service is in their own words “embarrassing”. You have to be a true A22 or climate extremist diehard to support rail even in urban centres now.
For the nerds, sure, reform Kiwirail.
For the rest of us, let it go.
Regional rail has been declining since the 1920s, when some rail lines were still being built.
More and more regional branch lines were cut throughout the 1970s and 1980s, because the car and truck were more efficient and responsive.
The Otago Rail Trail makes more money in cycling and tourism than the actual rail ever did. Since the mid 1990s this has gone from strength to strength, as has the entire region. Cycling the old rail line is about to extend all the way through from Clyde to Dunedin.
Rail is needed when you need to move bulky, heavy, cheap goods around.
That is not the economy we want. It won’t make us wealthy. It services industries like dairy that suck our country dry. It services the export of cheap logs which get more marginal every year. Decreasingly it services freezing works – our economy of mechanised death.
Regional rail supports the economy of stupid.
Rip up the regional tracks, shift away from bulk cheap exports, and do something smarter.
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