by Gareth Hughes
The crash between a logging truck and a school bus in Ruatoki yesterday was a tragedy. I am sure that, like me, you are hoping that the children involved will be able to make a full recovery.
The crash reminded me of what a transport advocate said some days ago when she came down to Wellington for our Smart Transport conference. She said, “I’ve been driving around Wellington for a few days now and I knew there was something different about the city. Then it suddenly struck me – there are no logging trucks here.”
She went on to talk about how the community in Whangarei fears that one of the impacts of closing the Northland to Auckland rail line will be more big trucks on their roads.
They say the Whangarei rail line carries 12,000 tonnes of freight a year – which means they will have about 200 extra trucks per day on their roads if the line closes.
As we highlighted in 2009, when the Minister was considering whether to allow bigger trucks onto our roads, trucks are disproportionately likely to be involved in fatal accidents.
According to the Ministry of Transport trucks are involved in 16% of fatal accidents on the road although they are responsible for only 7% of vehicle kilometers travelled.
Sadly, however, the Minister subsequently approved a law change to allow even larger juggernaut trucks onto our roads. Since then Kiwirail has also started consultation on whether to close some of our rural railway lines.
I’ve been involved with community groups that have campaigned to keep the Northland to Auckland and the Gisborne to Napier railway lines open.
Over the last year both groups have collected thousands of signatures on petitions to save the lines and organized many community events. The passion they have shown to keep these lines open is astonishing.
I can only hope that the government will heed their calls and require Kiwirail to look seriously into finding more customers to make these lines viable.
In some areas it may be that to keep the lines open we need to invest more into maintenance or even extend the line. For example, in Northland it would probably help the line to remain viable if it was extended out to Marsden B Point, one of New Zealand’s best ports. These maintenance projects are often expensive but their cost pales in comparison to the billions our government is borrowing and pouring into uneconomic and unnecessary motorways.
I believe there are many compelling reasons to keep our rural railway lines open. These include giving us another, more fuel-efficient option for transporting freight if the price of fuel raises sharply, to prevent climate change through reducing our greenhouse gas emissions, and to give these regions economic development options.
But when considering whether or not to keep the lines open Kiwirail should also not forget to take into consideration the fact that every tonne of freight carried by rail is a tonne off our roads – which means a safer environment for all those travelling in rural areas.
UPDATE: Various people have questioned the figures on rail freight I provided in this blog. You were correct, I’m afraid I repeated the numbers somebody else had mentioned to me without doing my own background research. In fact, according to this report, the Northland to Auckland rail line carried 300,000 tonnes of freight/year in 2006 (a drop of 700,000 tonnes/year since there ceased to be a direct link between the rail line and the port back in 2000).
At an average weight per heavy vehicle of 6.9 tonnes that equates to a further 836 heavy vehicles/week on Northland’s roads if the rail line closed. If you assume that all the weight would be carried by very large trucks (with an average weight of, for example, 30 tonnes) then that equates to 200 additional trucks/week.
Published in Environment & Resource Management by Gareth Hughes on Tue, September 6th, 2011
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on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
No – work it out.
At 40 tonnes per truck, that’s just 300 trucks total – over a year that’s less than one truck per day.
Perhaps your figures are wrong (or your time period).
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Bring back rail,yes I agree but I can’t see that happening from these bunch of idiots.
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Gareth says ..which means a safer environment for all those travelling in rural areas.”
Again incorrect.
Rail lines take freight off our main roads.
Rail lines don’t go into rural areas, so make little difference to rural roads.
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I hear that Bolivia banned all cars from cities for a day on Sunday (“National Day of the Pedestrian”). Seems like it was very pleasant. Just imagine if they did it here. They would hear the whining in Bolivia.
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Just how many rail lines run up into the forested hills of Northland and the East Coast that will take truck movements off their roads?
And how has the truck accident rate changed since the change in weight and size regulations? If it was that obvious things would get more dangerous the numbers should be stacking up by now, shouldn’t they?
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People think decisions based entirely on economics are the ones that benefit society the most. Seeing how our environment is changing, one has to question their judgement.
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I don’t know where you got the figures from for Northland line rail freight.
I was stocktaking all the cut timber in Northland a few years ago. The timber carried by rail alone would be much more than 12 000 ton a year. That is less than half of one log ship.
Rail to Port Whangarei was very effective in keeping the logging trucks away from busier Northland and Auckland roads.
Rail were picking up from depots such as Moerewa, Helensville, Wellsford and Pukekohe and taking timber straight to port Whangarei. Since timber exports shifted to Marsden point there has been a, noticeably, huge increase in trucks on the road.
The rail line should be kept and extended to Marsden Point. Apart from the fact we need the rail line for a low energy future, it will take hundreds of truck movements a day off State highway one. Especially through Whangarei city.
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Quite why some people think that ‘putting something on a truck, driving it through suburban roads, loading it onto a train, (having half of it nicked as used to happen) transporting it over a dedicated swath of land woiuld could be better used for a cycleway or vegetable plot, unloading it again, loading iot onto a nother truck, and agains driving it through suburbia’ is inherently worse than ‘load it onto a truck and sent it straight to where it needs to go’ is fancinating.
Rail is slower, less secure, more labour intensive, requires greater capital expendature, and less ‘fault tolerant’ than road, for transort of diverse goods.
Sure, rail is better for (example) taking coal/timber from pointA to processing at pointB, but that is not the focus of goods transport in NZ, and that is about the sole advantage of rail.
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Photonz says “Rail lines don’t go into rural areas, so make little difference to rural roads” and in doing so brings a dose of reality to the rail-lovers.
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I expect it’ll be insignificant but if we’re looking at potential for accidents then I think any possible effect on level crossing accidents from closing lines needs to be formally considered.
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Perhaps someone should define rural areas to clarfy their own thinking and better convey their meaning to others.
It does not get more rural than Fonterra’s industry and they say they were sending 70% of their milk by road in 2004 and only 30% by rail, now it’s 70% by rail and only 30% by road.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/4166684/KiwiRail-survival-plan-is-on-track
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10660652
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Rail carries a third of the country’s export goods even in its current creaky state, and one milk train carries the equivalent of 28 dairy road tankers.
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SPC says “and one milk train carries the equivalent of 28 dairy road tankers.”
Except that you still need all the milk trucks to take the milk TO the factory.
Rail is good for bulk point to point loads. Like milk factory to port, or coal mine to port.
For general freight it is far less efficient
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I suspect 100% of Fonterra milk travels by road. Most farmers have difficulty accepting trains backing up to the milking shed.
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Sure it’s 70% of the freight movement from the factories, but the location of the factories is centred around these rural areas.
1/3rd of exports go by rail to ports.
If Fonterra’s example – which they say was determined by the government buy up of rail in 2004 is any indication (and they now sometimes determine dairy plant location by the availability of rail), this may increase.
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With all due respect, the closure of these rural lines are unlikely to result in masses of extra trucks on the roads. In the case of the Masterton to Pahiatua Line, there has been no freight specific to that line carried by rail for nearly a quarter of a century, so if it closed then there would be not a single extra truck. In the case of Napier to Gisborne, there are two trains per week which might have twenty wagons – that might at worst equate to an additional ten trucks a day which on the scale of things isn’t all that large.
In the case of the North Auckland Line, things are a little different. There are daily freight trains which might have thirty wagons. The issue with the North Auckland Line is that it takes a very indirect route, and so while a truck could do Auckland to Whangarei in three hours, the freight train takes six hours to do the same run. Sure, an extension to Marsden Point would help, but until the time taken by the train is competitive with the time taken by a truck, the train will always be second best.
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Is speed-of-transport a strong factor in logging, or whatever other freight the trains are carrying?
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Speed of travel is not an issue for cargo such as logs.
They are often stored for weeks or months before export.
The benefits of the rail links from logging depots. Including Pukekohe, Helensville, Wellsford and Moerewa, among others, are very apparent around Whangarei. There has been a very noticeable increase in trucks since the port moved to Marsden Point. Which, unlike Port Whangarei, does not have a rail link.
The logging depots meant only short trips by trucks were needed before they were railed directly to Port Whangarei.
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With a lot of rural freight the winding route of the North Auckland line is an advantage.
There are depots in many places between South Auckland and Moerewa.
Getting something to Whangarei by truck usually takes 8 to 24 hours in reality. Rail would not be much different.
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With the Napier to Gisborne line the issue is forecast freight carriage levels – and the relative factor is cost of investment to maintain the line.
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SPC. The criteria should not be the usage now.
It should be the projected usage when fossil fuel is too expensive to waste by using road or air transport. Once a line is shut down the costs of re-establishing the rail corridor and renewing the grade and lines could be prohibitive.
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I’m with Kerry on that.
The signs that mark the locations of the old stations from Rangiora to Oxford can still be seen along Oxford Road (example on Google Maps), but the railway lines were ripped up in the 1950s. Sadly, Hell will freeze over before those lines are back.
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Not so much with logs, but with all the freight that is currently being transported on State Highway 1 it would certainly be an issue.
Kerry, with all due respect, I have never seen a truck crawling along State Highway 1 – from the minute it leaves the depot in Auckland to the minute it arrives in the depot in Whangarei would be three hours. For the train, it would be closer to six.
That is why you take the New South Wales approach and not rip up the tracks once the line is closed. I believe that there are lines over there that were shut in the 1970s where the tracks are still in place and with a small amount of work could be brought back into use fairly quickly.
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trains are cheaper than roads. Many ideas like solar power rail trains or Kiteship skySails are not normal. Been sunny winter where instead of building a solar power rail for freight of pine tree wood to process factories, they sell the lot?
Maybe they have interests in trucking or the ever expensive road laying.
I think we borrow more for green tech NOW.
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JS. I used to have a business in Whangarei.
By the time you ordered something from the supplier, usually in South Auckland, they got it to the trucking depot and it arrived at the depot in Whangarei for collection it was never less than 8 hours, more often afternoon on the next day.
A couple of larger orders, we railed, were at the Whangarei rail depot by the next day also.
Don’t forget the trucks have to get through Auckland city also.
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JS. In NZ if rail lines are closed we rip up the tracks, bulldoze the grade and sell the land off.
Can you imagine a Kiwirail manager, tasked with making profits, now! keeping ownership of the land.
Very hard to tell someone who has built a house or established a farm on former rail land to move.
Establishing a rail corridor for a possible Marsden point line has been a very expensive exercise.
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I think a truck & bus crash, only highlights the need to focus on getting as much freight & people off the roads & onto TRAINS.. unfortunatley this Govt. is more concerned about pandering to ‘business interests’ as opposed to innovative ideas.
Most countries in Europe, Australia, Asia & even America see the benefits of this.. why is Aotearoa/NZ still living in a time-warp where roads & road transport are the priority ?
“Wake-up N-act”
Kia-ora
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I found it interesting going up and down parts of the Pan American Highway in Chile a few years ago, which is a very well-built major road (at least within a day south of Santiago), but nearly all the traffic is buses and trucks carrying passengers and freight. In New Zealand and other relatively-western countries we seem to presume that if there’s a road it’s primarily for cars, because everyone wants to own a car and have a space to themselves. I think if people in Chile and elsewhere could afford to own cars there might be a similar effect, but at the same time I sort of envy being able to get in and out of small rural villages several times a day on what is essentially public transport, simply because nearly everyone from those villages makes full use of it so as to make it commercially viable.
It won’t fly in New Zealand, because we have such an individualistic culture where people tend to dislike sharing space with others on equal terms. On public transport you might find yourself having to sit next to a stinky person or someone who’s mentally unstable and keeps wanting to talk to you, which would also mean having to acknowledge that these people exist. If we could all own and operate our own private aeroplanes, Air New Zealand would quickly go bankrupt on its current business model.
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The National Government’s approach to provision and deprivation of transport infrastructure choices is, in view of the International Energy agency’s recent ( May 2011 ) admission/announcement/warning that we are now in the post peak/cheap oil age, extremely worrying on the strategic level.
All the arguments about the economic costs and benefits of rail vs trucks based on today’s costings, safety on our roads, costs of maintaining roads vs railways, air pollution, noise pollution etc. pale into insignificance when viewed in relation to what the IEA are telling us:The age of cheap oil is over !
According to recently completed studies of 800 oil fields, we now know that ‘conventional oil’ supplies peaked in 2006 and that natural gas and ‘unconventional oil’ from tar sands are NEVER going to make up for the demand coming from India and China.
Whatever government is in power must respond appropriately by providing transport(and other fossil fuel energy dependant sectors) with alternative choices: Plundering our tax/rates derived resources to reward those with vested interests in the business-as-usual model to undertake inappropriate infrastructural projects ( i.e. motorway extensions) and advocating for the destruction of existing infrastructure ( i.e. closing down our regional railways ) is NOT the way forward. Those of us who’re concerned enough to get involved in working for a positive change need to realise that by continuing to focus on the details and justifications based on current and historical costings, we are wasting our time by getting involved in arguments that those in power will either ignore or provide a counter to.
The energy paradigm has changed FOREVER and New Zealand urgently needs to respond accordingly.
This is the irrefutable issue of strategic urgency that no-one standing for election can be allowed to ignore and this is where we must focus our energies.
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