Click on the image to enlarge. Here is the link
Click on the image to enlarge. Here is the link
This entry was posted on Friday, August 24th, 2012 at 11:39 am and is filed under #OpenLabourNZ, #ownourfuture, infrastructure, jobs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Please change this to a proper post , rather than an illegible screen print of what looks like a post.
Just click on it to enlarge Ghost. It was put up like this for a reason. No media outlet has reported it yet because it contains information from the injuncted report.
My screen reader can’t read pictures, have you a link to the original post?
Done. See the post now. Clare
What this says is that the workshops cannot take on any more work as they are at capacity for some time. Hence the instruction to hold off on new work. Is it your contention from your personal experience of running an engineering company that capacity doesn’t matter, that worker safety is ok to compromise as long as there is more work than they can handle? From my experience in engineering project management, and it is vast, I would suggest it very much matters.
@ Dave
Sounds pretty dodgy to me . Clearly if you put off workers then they are not there to do the work! Some sort of devious ‘catch 22′ do you think?
National seems to be deliberately heading Kiwirail into crisis, probably according to some cunning plan.
It is time that we had a Royal Commission on transport whereby the whole sector is assessed and rationalised. The trucking and road construction industries seems to be Nationals darling. Are there some contributions,brown paper bags, or something, in the air.
It has never been properly resolved whether the trucking industry totally pays its way- there is evidence, that despite the significant road user charges that the larger trucks incur, that their contributions may not cover the vastly more expensive road engineering that is unnecessary for just lighter trucks and traffic. Despite the huge initial roading establishment costs the heaviest trucks immediately proceed to damage the tarmac and road base much quicker. That is they cost the taxpayer heaps?. OF course this govt has succumbed to lobbying and recently allowed even heavier vehicles -( where the bridges can take them!!) Isn`t there evidence that one fully laden heavy truck actually significantly moves the road surface and does the damage of several thousand cars! I understand so.
Rail, with efficient truck feeder sevices could/should be much more efficient? Rail track is suited to extreme, frequent heavy loadings – we have it and we should use it to the max, when and wherever possible But first some real research, and an open mind is needed…So, a Royal Commission? Who Knows it may also blow away any coherant arguement for the governments baby.. “The Roads of national significance”? What a possible saving! And then,of course there is the environmental question!
Sadly , private enterprise will usually behave for its ‘best’ bottom line – well, we let them have a crack with our railways, remember, but they just seemed hell bent on destroying the system, for the benefit of their trucks? Fortuneately they just failed. Let us do it right this time
We should be very wary of the present governments motives!
SO, a Royal Commission?
IF rail is so wonderful and efficient, why aren’t people and freight companies falling over themselves to use rail? For example, why doesnt Clare travel by rail from Dunedin to Wellington? That would help keep Hillside working. Why are people apparently happy to spend so much time and money in cars and airplanes? I dont think it is likely it is all a dastardly right-wing plot concocted by Crosby-Textor.
@ One Track
OK – There certainly is a dilemma . As a small population we do not have the economies of scale. BUT we have a functioning rail network needing some maintenance – just as we have a roading network with some stress and huge development costs if the government is to be believed. If we opt for virtually exclusive trucking then we will have huge ongoing maintenance costs as well(Trucks destroy pavement at an alarming rate?) We are at the ‘crossroads’. Clearly rail is much more desireable fuel and environmentwise on the major routes. Rail is much easier and cost efficient to ‘rampup’- ie if you have the network(we have)quadrupling(or more?) traffic is comparatively painless.
Perhaps we should have a policy to phase out heavy trucks on trunk routes – perhaps over a ‘truck lifespan’, if it makes economic sense.
IF trucks are in reality being subsidised (cause greater roading costs than revealed)then rail may be more sensible on high volume routes.
It seems likely that we should never have run down the railways freight network and allowed the huge trucks free reign. But it is probably true that we are too small for parallel services. We must determine that we are taking the right course. Key and co seem to be trying to surreptitiously destroy rail freight. We must at least try to keep them honest and open with us…no easy task!
We surely need an authoritative unbiased study (Must be a Royal Commission?)to determine future policy for the nations advantage.(eg trunk route options , truck feeder services, efficient load transfers etc) Perhaps informed and enlightened policy may differ from the plans of very powerful lobbies which seem to have the cabinets ear.
Of course as the railfreight is a state monopoly, and as ministers have recently told us has little or no value(ie they could not sell it for much) it is an annoyance to rightwing ‘idealogues’. It seems that they may have decided to waste it away. ‘Government’ by stealth is unethical, dishonest, and in fact dispicable.
We must watch this government, which experience indicates may mislead and dumb us down at every opportunity.
Watch that cheap quote from Hillside double after northern offices revise it. I have seen this happen.
National are setting NZRail up to fail.
We have had sheer incompetence in the running of NZRail from the time NZRail was gifted to Fay Richwhite by the Government.
Look forward to Labour’s Rail Policy for the 2014 election.
Some where in the twisted minds of the neocon Nact camp is a plan for Kiwirail and it is not as a state owned business.
Its an old trick of running down a public owned facility, borrowing to shore it up, then when in debt selling it off, as we have seen before.
As the transport scene changes we will be held to ransom.
What we need is real leadership.
Labour take note of a man who inspires.
http://www.upworthy.com/a-tea-partier-decided-to-pick-a-fight-with-a-foreign-president-it-didnt-go-so-we
Kiwirail is being driven into the ground ready to be picked up by the vultures again, I believe Wiscounsin Rail & Fay Richwhite now control British Rail, I don’t know how they are performing.
We should be getting Japan Rail JR to have a look at how we are operating and set up a joint venture with one of the top rail companies in the world.
If you are going to do something properly. National have a policy of cheap is best, ie Rail wagons & Locomotives from a third world economy. Pay peanuts you get monkeys. I hope someone is going to be accountable or does the taxpayer pick up the tab again for Government incompetence.
“I believe Wiscounsin Rail & Fay Richwhite now control British Rail, I don’t know how they are performing.”
I don’t think so Jack. What evidence do you have to support this wild assertion?
Jack British Rail is owned and operated by NetworkRail. A no-dividend company. All profits are retained for the benefit of the network. As legal entity it is subject to renationalising at any time the British Government see fit. It is not owned by Wisconsin Rail or Fay Richwhite. None of the directors are from either of these companies. Essentially NetworkRail has no shareholders and is controlled by a “members” board which is made up of private companies (stakeholders) that oversee board of Director activities and a Government director. It is for all intent and purpose a private comany run by business interests in a business like manner. Prior to its formation, when the Government owned entity Railtrack needed a further 3.5 Billion pounds just to keep it running, the new company was formed and given free reign to turn it around, which they did. NetworkRail owns the infrastructure as well as the trains that run on it. To cut a long story short Jack once again you are wrong, no smell of Wisconsin or Fay Richwhite anywhere but in the mists of your memory.
Japans National Railways are also privately owned and operated. They are all publicly traded companies. Not a JV in sight.
Jack.. why would JR want to waste time with a train set? JR has about 20 platforms in Shinjuku, some trains running at 3 min intervals, and there are two other train systems with multiple platforms below JR. I once heard or read the population of NZ goes through Shinjuku in a day. And we have.. err a train set.. with card readers that don’t work. Puhlease give up Clare.. what 5 + 18 + 10 + me commenting on the great train robbery (that was Lab buying it back). Keep the coal train (if we are allowed to mine), expand the milk train. Flog off the rest.. some good land tied up under the train set.
Obviously someone gave me some misinformation as i have not researched this myself with regards to the running of British Rail.
I will follow up once I get some more information
Not 100% sure on the ownership structure of JR Japan Rail however I will do some homework on this.
We need to get some professional advice on how to run our railways properly,as we appear to have another bunch of clowns running the show. It never ends in this country, incompetence from top to bottom.
Pedrovsky you are correct re Shinjuku they put through about 4.5 million people per day through Shinjuku Station and that was 20 years ago. This makes our pissarse little train set look like a childs toy set, however we can even get it right, or keep the trains on the rails.
Jack the research has been done, both your claims are patently false. The ownership structure for is PRIVATE AND PUBLICLY LISTED. Private ownership has turned both your examples of ‘what we should do’ into viable infrastructure, whereas Government ownership for both BR and JR created a black hole sucking endless piles of taxpayer money with no return to the taxpayer (sound familiar?). It is always advisable to do your homework before postulating ‘facts’. Its what most people do.
Shame we didn’t get decent shareholders for NZRail when we first privatised it, it just got asset stripped and the small shareholders picked up the tab, not being an expert on NZRail it appears to go from one C*CK UP to THE NEXT>
You are comparing apples and oranges with JR and Network Rail.
On one hand you have JR where fare prices are strictly regulated (no I do not have the numbers but I can tell you I haven’t seen a fare increase during 8 years of traveling to this country) and on the other hand you have Network Rail’s various companies, where I saw a 26% fare increase during 2 years of living there on my London Victoria -> Maidstone route to work. It is a complete disaster. The previous Blair govt regulation (which pinned fare increases to inflation + an arbitrary margin) was ditched by the ConDem govt which is very very quickly putting commuting well out of the price range of the man on the Clapham omnibus.
Edit NB: Note that while Japan’s economy is said to be stagnated, the UK economy is back in recession, which makes the actions of the Network Rail companies more odious.