Wellington commuters who regularly use our local trains live with the day to day realities of the last National government’s disastrous decision to privatise what was then NZ Rail. Between its sale and eventual buy-back in 2008, very little was spent on upgrading or even maintaining rail services. Some of the trains running on Wellington’s rail lines are literally museum pieces.
The last Labour government started to repair some of that damage. For example the new trains that will start arriving in Wellington later this year were purchased only after central government stumped up most of the cash. The problems that have plagued our local trains over recent months are largely due to the huge backlog of maintenance and upgrading that’s now being done. Had it been done over the past decade and a half we wouldn’t be in the mess we’re in now.
Like a lot of Wellingtonians, I’m disappointed the new National-led government seem to have so little faith in rail. From the outside looking in it seems as though they want it to fail so that they can carve it up, sell it off, or close it down. They’re now talking about closing down regional lines, what a sell-out. Freight within NZ is expected to increase by up to 75% in the next 20 years – does National want to see all of that going onto the roads?
I see Warren Buffett , Americas canniest investor has bought a railroad, must have been following the lead of Cullen in getting Kiwirail( and its interisland ferries and freight business)
It’s hardly a surprise that National are so anti-rail after they took $55,000 in election “contributions” from the trucking lobby group the Road Transport Forum, run by ex-National cabinet minister Tony Friedlander. Steven Joyce isn’t a Minister – he’s Tony Friedlander’s sock puppet.
I don’t know why the pro-rail lobby spend time trying to convince Joyce of anything – why not take a leaf out of Friedlander’s book and simply purchase the policy like the truckies do?
Thank you Chris for admitting the problems with rail are largely that fault of Labour.
“The problems that have plagued our local trains over recent months are largely due to the huge backlog of maintenance and upgrading that’s now being done. Had it been done over the past decade and a half we wouldn’t be in the mess we’re in now.”
That is nine years of Labour and 1 and a half of National.
Thanks for your refreshing honesty.
…. and thank you, Whaleoil, for your passive agreement that the Minister of Transport is merely the mouthpiece of paid lobbyists, open to purchase from the highest bidder.
My, the honesty really is refreshing this morning!
Here’s some honesty, I wish National would fix the bleepin’ rail!
gee the cetacean has noticed the railways exist.
But in his own words Fail.
The railways were privately owned ( John Key being amoung them) for virtually all the time Labour was in government.
The lack of maintenance was due to the (succession ) of private owners).
They were run down like Air NZ was – remember the bits falling off their planes- in private ownership
spot on there chris. admitting you didn’t do anything until it was to late anyway.
“Between its sale and eventual buy-back in 2008″
so not until the writing was on the wall and labour knew it were being ousted did it decide to saddle new zealand with a toy train set, that immediately halved in value. it’s still referred to as the deal of the century in australia. labour had nine years to do something, then decided it could be done in 5 months. but nothing really got done did it?
RLO you forget we got the underlying land for $1 ( ie the tracks) on a separate deal done earlier. That was the ‘deal of the century’ for NZ
Perfect land for ripping up the rails and running road-trains down it along with buses, freeing up SH1 for motorists.
My thoughts exactly Clarke. Sock puppet is such an apt term.
Its good to see you support commuter rail Chris. I have noticed in your other posts you are keep to find ways of improving rail etc etc. But I think you are 5 years too early on this post. National have continued to invest in commuter rail in Wellington and Auckland. However once complete, the worry is there will be no more investments.
Labour made mistakes while in government, taking 8years to buy the rail, while they invested in more motorways (such as WRR). You could say it was exactly like what national are doing now, don’t you think?
GWWNZ, I do not forget. it seems that you however are glossing over the fact that the rail network slumped 50% of it purchase price in less than eight months. and that the profitable part of the network, trucking wasn’t included in the deal. it’s deal, it’s a steal ………
‘Between its sale and eventual buy-back in 2008, very little was spent on upgrading or even maintaining rail services’
Can you please tell me when NZRC was formed, and its trading entity Ontrack, and what Ontrack’s purpose was.
Rail- Track ownership,maintainence and upgrades by chance?
Government owned under Labour?
One of things I bleat on about is how the directors of NZ companies must always act in the best interests of the company, not the shareholders regardless of nationally.
Wisconsin Rail and Fay Richwhite treated NZ Rail as a cash cow and delibrately ran the company into the ground. The current mess is all their doing. How they managed to dodge prosecution for their stripping of the railways amazes me.
GWW, effectively Labour did end up paying around $300 million for the tracks. They just paid it in 2008 rather than 2002/2003 (can’t remember exactly when).
I don’t think Labour’s transpor policy pre-2006 is anything for them to be particularly proud of. Fortunately post-2006 they got around to doing Project DART, half sorting out electrification in Auckland, buying new trains for Wellington and buying back Kiwirail.
If they’d done that a few years earlier then we’d actually have electric trains in Auckland by now, we wouldn’t have a rail system crumbling to bits (406 points or signal failures in the last year, that’s more than one a day!) and we’d actually be able to put some serious pressure on the Nats to stump up with the money for the CBD rail tunnel. Instead we’ve had to beg Steven Joyce repeatedly not to cancel every public transport project in Auckland and watch while he splashed billions on holiday highways.
Thanks Labour. You eventually came to the party, but you were about 6 years late.
“5:59PM Sun 07 March
Svces running up to 45 min lte on PAR lne btwn Wgtn and Parapar due 2 Operational reasons.”
“11:54AM Mon 08 March
Svcs will be replaced by buses btwn Wgtn & Tawa frm 12:30pm unil 2pm”
“7:33PM Mon 08 March
The 1835 btwn Parapar & Wgtn is running up to 60 min lte due 2 Disabled Freight Service.”
“7:34PM Mon 08 March
The 1905 btwn Parapar & Wgtn is running up to 45 min lte due 2 Disabled Freight Service.”
“12:58PM Tue 09 March
Currently Svcs on the Paraparaumu line are running up to 30 minutes late”
Then tonight all the power went out at the train station and my train was about half an hour late.
Guess that’s what around a decade of leaving your infrastructure to stagnate in a private monopoly does
Sigh.
You think that’s bad Nicola. In January this year on the Western Line in Auckland only 36% of trains were less than 5 minutes late! And 10% of trains didn’t even make it to their destination!
Crikey they’d be ashamed of that in the 3rd world.
@ Nicola
A lot of us will have very bitter memories of what several decades of nationalised monopoly meant to communters in the UK. I don’t think it’s a question of nationalised vs private.
Unless you’re prepared to invest massively in rail the nature of the infrastructure means you’re going to get periods of unreliability and chaos.
Unfortunately, in New Zealand, there’s only 4 million or so of us to make that investment.
Unfortunately Labour is partially to blame for the current state of Wellington rail. The Wellington Regional Rail Programme was started about 5 years too late.
The WRRP has nothing to do with who was running the trains, it was signed off when Toll still ran the show.
With regard to Auckland, Labour govt was probably only about 2 years behind what it should of been.
However you are spot on about National lack of commitment to rail. They have not announced any new projects whatsoever, and nothing is on their radar. Letting an SOE take out a loan hardly counts as govt investment in rail.
Hopefully this maybe the one area where Nats big business mates might come in handy.
the reason why wellingtons rail network is dodgy is because the current national government dont give a stuff about wellington at all…all the money goes towards funding aucklands woes while the trains in wellington keep packing up…all the more reason why us wellingtonians should hate auckland and aucklanders even more…they get everything while wellington the capital misses out with dire consequences.
Did anyone notice that the last Australian Federal budget spent more on rail than on roads?
Sadly they are just plain smarter.
Kudos to those who focused on the issue rather than who is to blame, and it seems National and Labour can take pretty equal share in that.
Roads are a dead end (pun intended) method of transport. Just about every Auckland roading project opens AT CAPACITY, so it is already stressed upon opening.
The petrol price hikes showed Aucklanders are prepared to use public transport a fact seemingly lost on the road lovers.