Rail has a bright future both here and overseas. Here’s why:

Recent press from overseas saw Australian trucking magnate, Lindsay Fox, publicly support a campaign to move more freight by rail. In a rare show of non-partisan honesty, Fox said, “’I'm talking against myself when I’m talking about putting things on rail. We’re only here for a short time…I’d certainly like to see some of these things [done] that are in the interests of the nation.”

In the same week, the world’s richest man, Warren Buffett, announced an investment of $US34 billion in rail. Buffet said, “Our country’s future prosperity depends on its having an efficient and well-maintained rail system.”

Our own Minister of Transport has remained sceptical about rail’s likely future. Joyce has retreated from a key target in the New Zealand Transport Strategy to grow rail’s share of the freight task from 18 to 25% by 2040. He’s funded the bare minimum of essential investment to keep the network operational. And he’s placed an unfair expectation on rail that “all investments in the national rail network [will] provide a commercial rate of return.” (Investments in roads have no such similar requirement.)

But the last two investments the Government has made in rail have been stunning successes.

Last year, the Government subsidised the building of a rail siding at Tangiwai to enable forest products to travel by rail rather than road to the Port of Wellington. An investment of just over $1 million spread over three years is yielding cost savings to Government of $16 million and benefits to the nation of $9 million. 3,000 trucks/year are being taken off our roads as a result of this subsidy.

Another investment of just under $1 million to build log transfer yards in Marton, Wanganui, and Masterton will realise a $90 million return to the nation over the 30-year life of the project. By year four of operations, 9,000 trucks/year will no longer be barrelling down our roads.

These two small investments yield benefit cost ratios of 99 — an arbitrary number due to the fact they have negative costs. The 99 means they’re investment no-brainers, the likes of which even the Road Transport Forum couldn’t stop. (They tried.)

Rail in New Zealand has been mismanaged in the past and, under private ownership, run down to the point of collapse. Joyce is right to approach any new investment with scepticism. But he also needs to understand the tremendous potential for economic benefit from the right investment in the right places. Without a modern rail network, we’ll never be able to tap these investment no-brainers that are everywhere there are trucks moving freight in large numbers. Perhaps this is why Mainfreight, New Zealand’s largest trucking firm, is backing the future of rail in this country too.

Heatley’s damning report (available soon on the ISCR site) will no doubt be seized upon by the Road Transport Forum and others to justify the further erosion of rail services in New Zealand leaving the growth of road freight unchallenged – their peculiar version of urban hell (unless you’re wealthy enough to live a long way from major arterial routes).

Subsequent questioning from the audience revealed that there was a lot wrong with Heatley’s work. To the question of how Peak Oil was factored into his analysis, Heatley dismissed concerns about the security of this finite resource, responding that there was 1000 years’ worth of fossil fuels left under the ground. Tell that to the International Energy Agency.

Even if you accept all of Heatley’s arguments, they completely sink if you care a bean about energy security. Or climate change. Or if you just think trains are cool.

What I am interested to know though is what Friedlander, of the Road Transport Forum, and former National Party MP, thinks about workers’ right to strike on political issues.  It would seem inconsistent to me if he were to support the right of truck companies to make their workers protest about transport costs, but oppose them as union members having the right to strike and protest about, oh, say, the privatisation of ACC.

I know the issue is about road user charges rather than the actual rising cost of transport.  But please let’s put this is context; truck companies are complaining about paying an extra $53.80 per 10,000km for a five tonne truck.  Compare that to the rising cost of diesel over the last two years and I would have thought truck companies would be calling out for a government that had a plan for peak oil, wanted to invest in energy alternatives and more fuel efficient ways of freighting goods.

Maybe they are. Maybe Friday’s traffic jam is going to be an oblique protest in support of the Green Party?

Because sadly the real costs that trucks, as they presently do business, now face are out of the government’s hands.  What we need is plan to deal with it not to pretend it isn’t happening.

[UPDATE] I see The Standard’s readers are having a similar debate.