Tell Winston he’s dreamin’
Two new Cook Strait rail ferries to enter service in 2029 – Peters
Labour, who’s ferries programme was cancelled by the coalition, highlighted Peters’ plans had no details on the expected costs of the new boats or marine infrastructure.
The party’s transport spokesperson Tangi Utikere said: “Due in 2029, all we know is that the ferries are smaller than those Winston Peters was involved with negotiating in the first place. That must have been a hard pill to swallow for the Minister for Rail.
“Now we are shopping for smaller ferries, and a whole lot of cash has been sunk at the bottom of the Cook Strait. That’s all down to the Minister of Finance.
“All Winston Peters has announced today is that New Zealanders will be waiting another three years for ferries and still have no idea how much they’re going to cost.”
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Out of idle curiosity, what proportion of freight carried across Cook Strait by The Interislander” is rail freight?
And is that proportion trending up or trending down?
Kiwis: Your government lost $billion on one deal.
Winston: Its our vibe your honour.
The smaller ferries mean the infrastructure doesn’t need to be replaced. Given that under Labour’s plan, the biggest part of the cost was infrastructure replacement, it is entirely logical the Winston Peter’s plan is significantly cheaper.
As for the actual cost, that is obviously dependent on an actual cost from the chosen ship builder. I reckon about $1.2 billion for two ferries, $200 million for some infrastructure improvements. In short about half the cost of Labour’s plan.
There is not a shred of publicly available evidence to show what the infrastructure cost would be, we could have asked the Chinese or South Korean for a quote as any sensible person knows that you get multiple quotes before committing to big projects. Nicola’s word is not reliable evidence in the real universe, you also ignore that replacing 3 ferries with 2 requires that the new ferry has at least 50% more capacity than the existing just to maintain the existing capacity, they might be able to go a bit faster although the Marlborough sounds have a speed limit so any extra trips are unlikely to increase capacity a lot. You need to allow for growth in capacity as well, this government is doing its best to crash the economy so this is not a short term problem however we might get a decent government one day with real growth and a ferry service that is unable to cope.
Smaller, cheaper for now but deferred portside infrastructure.
As Andrew Dickens of ZB said we are going back to the thinking of 30 years ago. Penny wise Pound foolish.
I don’t often agree with any ZB commentary but in this case Andrew is spot on.
In 5 years time when Winston is gone the money will need to be spent.
I am not holding my breath for the cost of the ferries and the Picton rebuild to be revealed. I am sure we will never know because Willis and Peters will be instructing various senior civil servants to hide the numbers in a myriad of allocations that in no way relate to NZ Rail or portside operations.
Winston has already stated that he expects the port companies to fund this work in future. This is just trying to disguise the true cost of what is really state highway one and the linking of the two islands. Imagine if the government expected Auckland to pay for the new harbour crossing because the Government responsibility ceased at the waters edge. Fucking stupid.
Absolutely correct on all points.
How much rail cargo is heading north south? When all our major exports and imports are going east west. There can’t be much. Some cement, maybe some fertiliser.
I can’t find any numbers on wagon volume. Kiwirail lists out passenger, car and truck volumes in their annual reports but nothing on rail freight. I think the numbers must be very low. I can remember some wagons getting loaded at least once but I think they were empty. Maybe it’s just so they can be maintained at hillside.
Seems like a poor decision made by a poor country that spends capital inefficiently, which keeps it poor.
But hey, I’m just judgmental
I have a mate who works for one of the trucking companies and they put freight on rail as well as their trucks, the other major companies do as well, if you spent more time observing instead of judging you would notice that the big freight companies all have a rail siding as well. Cement and fertilizer is more likely to use shipping as it is bulk and cheaper with trucks delivering from the depot to the farm or concrete plant as required.
Don’t forget the costs of the cronies Winstone employed to broker the deal no doubt there will be additional costs, but they will say they a commercially sensitive. We will probably never know the true costs.