The disconnect between Trains that don’t work, roading gridlock and Government policy

NZ is one of the few countries that sold our public transport systems and the nonsense underfunding of our public transport system sees entire rail closures because it’s too hot…

Thousands affected as dozens of Auckland trains cancelled due to hot weather

Thousands of Auckland commuters were affected by train cancellations today due to heat restrictions and tracks reaching more than 40 degrees Celsius.

On the social media platform X, Auckland Transport said that some train services from 1pm to 8pm on eastern, western and southern lines were cancelled.

Train service have returned to normal this evening following the widespread cancellations.

KiwiRail, which manages the tracks, said the city has had high temperatures and heat restrictions in different areas for most of the last three weeks.

Its general manager for metros Jon Knight said heat on the track was not directly related to air temperature and steel rails can get hotter.

…this heat that shuts down underfunded Rail networks is also eroding the ground with huge rainfall…

Discovery of 3m cavity closes part of state highway in Tauranga

Part of State Highway 29A is closed in Tauranga after a large tomo, or cavity, was discovered under the road.

The cavity, which is about three metres deep and filled with water, was discovered on Friday in the left-hand lane heading from Barkes Corner to Oropi Roundabout.

It looked like a small hole from the outside, but the sheer size of the cavity was revealed when NZ Transport Agency Waka Kotahi crews investigated further, acting regional manager of maintenance and operations Roger Brady said.

“As soon as we saw the size of the tomo we fully closed the road due to the potential safety risk to road users.”

Barely a year after the devastation of Cyclone Gabrielle, we are seeing what catastrophic climate change looks like in real time as roads develop mass erosion caused by extreme rain dumps caused by climate change.

We don’t have the adaptation capacity because we refuse to tax the polluters more.

You appreciate things are only going to get worse from here on in right?

Despite the climate denial from the Right in NZ, it is real and it is here now.

The $14billion dollar damage of Cyclone Gabrielle and our inability to rebuild highlights how little resilience we have in our underfunded system…

National’s response to all these threats to our roading infrastructure is user pays.

When the Boomer King Wayne Brown is struck dumb by the Government destroying the hopes of public transport infrastructure in our groaning gridlocked city, you know shit just got real.

I kept asking questions to candidates about roading privatisation during the election debate series because the obviousness of where National’s roading platform led to seemed an important issue, but it never caught a wider focus.

Now we not only get the privatisation, but we get the pain of user pays inequality.

It’s all stick, no carrot.

What the petrol tax did was generate revenue from as wide a group as possible to fund infrastructure, National have dumped that in favour of privatisation of roads with tolling and congestion taxes that will burn the poor with no expansion in public transport infrastructure to provide alternatives.

Remember our subsidisation of public transport was supposed to be an emission reducing tactic as well, so by dumping them will not only make gridlock more likely, it will produce more emissions that are feeding the climate change extremes we are watching burn our country this Summer.

So we open the taps on immigration (250 000 in a year) and rather than build the infrastructure for that level of migration, we simply impose user pays as the solution???

Whatever decision is cooked up will be for the benefit of a Right wing donor somewhere.

We are in the age of consequences now and we will choke on our denial.

 

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