Road vs rail transport

[R650R]

Bear in mind rail didn't collapse as an option for any overwhelming functional reason, it collapsed because NZR continually fucked up, because govt repeatedly failed to deal with that and because NZR employees stole your shit.

Rail never collapsed. it was deliberately destroyed to break the union and workers rights movements. The govt of day liquidated it and sold it for pennies on the dollar.
Deborah Coddington wrote a great article once about hpw the social and welfare costs have actually cost the country more than if we had opf just kepr pouring money through the floorboards there but that's another thread of its own....

But interesting angle, lets let people use rail if they pay for it. Have absolutely everything they buy transported by rail, refund their road transport portion of income taxes and see how that bill tallies up. True user pays of a properly funded rail operation would be quite expensive.

Funny how people are happy for rail to have a govt funded welfare handout but are unhappy that a freight mode that actually pays massive taxes towards its infrastructure needs should have any help?

[R650R]

Pretty sure I don't need to ask what industry you work in.

10-4 good buddy.

don't drive on road any more, occasional off highway driving but mostly forklifts from 4.5 to 16 tonne capacity.

Its just that here in the bay we get this anti truck rhetoric all the time from a minority of rundown motel owners and populist local body politicians seeking cheap ratings boost and media coverage.
One of the best scaremongering stories our local rag published was that the new white painted museum would be turned black by truck exhaust fumes. Of course the ships in port burning low grade bunker fuel (that's the stuff that's not even good enough to use as road tar) are not to blame at all aye?
Oh the museum is still very white but the've put some fancy painted murals and stuff to cover their tracks on that false claim.....

[R650R]

If money spent on road user charges and road taxes were actually spent on improving roading ...


One truck and trailer load of freight ... in the Heavy class would generate more tax revenue for the Government ... than all your personal vehicles combined. If they were keen to stop damage to roads ... RAIL freight would be their priority. NOT allowing HEAVIER vehicles on our roads.

And one of the biggest benefactors of bigger trucks is actually cyclists and to a degree car drivers too.

When the HPMV scheme was introduced many sections of state highway were upgraded and new hard shoulders installed. Many of these were in areas where cyclists were being passed close by all vehicle types in open road zones.
Talked to a guy in the know who sits on many road safety and engineering groups and he said the two opposing road user types needs commonly intersected in enough places to see the cost benefit ratio initiate works that might not have otherwise been done.
So next time you pull over on that nice wide hard shoulder to check your phone or put tour wet weather gear on just think hey a truck paid for that

[Ocean1]

Rail never collapsed. it was deliberately destroyed to break the union and workers rights movements. The govt of day liquidated it and sold it for pennies on the dollar.
Deborah Coddington wrote a great article once about hpw the social and welfare costs have actually cost the country more than if we had opf just kepr pouring money through the floorboards there but that's another thread of its own....

But interesting angle, lets let people use rail if they pay for it. Have absolutely everything they buy transported by rail, refund their road transport portion of income taxes and see how that bill tallies up. True user pays of a properly funded rail operation would be quite expensive.

Funny how people are happy for rail to have a govt funded welfare handout but are unhappy that a freight mode that actually pays massive taxes towards its infrastructure needs should have any help?

Dude, I've worked for NZR, I know exactly where the fault for it's well documented failures lie, and it's nowhere outside NZR and it's employees.

And yes, I'm a great fan of having everyone pay for what they use, what, not being an adherent of communist doctrine an' all.

[R650R]

Dude, I've worked for NZR, I know exactly where the fault for it's well documented failures lie, and it's nowhere outside NZR and it's employees.

And yes, I'm a great fan of having everyone pay for what they use, what, not being an adherent of communist doctrine an' all.

Fair enough but even as a dysfunctional asset, its still is/was a core vital strategic infrastructure asset that successive govts left to rot in the to hard basket. Had an Uncle work there as 'security' so know all to well what used to go on...

What gets me is the various pro train people probably voted a lot of these muppets into power then voted for them again.
Even if the Green party (gopd help us) got majority vote theres no way they could resurrect rail, way too much cost involved. The private sector is boosting things with off site hubs but still we are a very small bit of land and distances moved are very short compared to bigger places like china, usa and Australia etc... and look at them theys till have huge amounts of trucks too.

[R650R]

What a lot of people don't get though is if we had that utopia of mostly rail and nice big rail heads/huibs/shunting yards outside of town, is the massive amount of slightly smaller truck moves we would have.
Now a loaded up six wheeler metro truck is not terribly faster at the traffic lights or anywhere else compared to big linehaul truck, infact a good driver can do multi drop on a b train around town at suitable places faster than two little trucks, it just costs more. Anyway so your going to have say 100 big trucks off the road and stuff on trains. Now to move that stuff from train yard your going to need about 200 metro trucks to move the same freight making multiple trips all day long back and forth. 50% of their time is wasted energy running empty where as a lot of the big trucks would have delivered some of their freight direct on way in to depot.
Theres lot os little thinsg like this that people don't realise unless you've worked in transport logistics.
Also kiwi truck drivers often load and unload their own freight, take ownership for damage and security of it. Rail wouldn't be as bad as it used to for theft and damages with modern cctv but it would still happen more in that environment than in trucks I reckon.

[caspernz]

The logistics landscape changed after deregulation, can't turn back time aye? As much as this may be contrary, me being in road transport and all, plenty of stuff that gets moved by road could/should be moved by rail. The cost to the end user is what's it all about nowadays.

You make some valid points Ray, but that's mostly lost on Joe Public when they buy their cereal at the supermarket. The price is what drives it. Which way the subsidies for the mode of transport went doesn't matter at this stage. Never mind the fact that the path that cereal and its ingredients took is lost on most of Joe Public.

Low population density along with economies of scale in this country more or less doom rail, in the absence of regulation at least. Rail seems to only work for bulk commodities, when it could work well if a multi modal approach was taken further. Narrow gauge rail and low tunnels hamper that, along with that bit of water called Cook Strait.

Do lots of heavy trucks ruin the roads? No doubt about it. Take a ride on a road not frequented by large numbers of trucks, no scientific approach needed. The costing for road vs rail becomes a moot point for me, either way the taxpayer supports movement of goods from A to B.

[Bass]

Do lots of heavy trucks ruin the roads? No doubt about it. Take a ride on a road not frequented by large numbers of trucks, no scientific approach needed.

Best demo I ever saw was about 18 months after the limit was lifted to 60?? tonne. Rode in to have a look at the Tarndale slip. They had been logging in there. The side of the of the road going in was lotsa fun. The side coming out was destroyed.

[Ocean1]

Fair enough but even as a dysfunctional asset, its still is/was a core vital strategic infrastructure asset that successive govts left to rot in the to hard basket. Had an Uncle work there as 'security' so know all to well what used to go on...

How do you "fix" a dysfunctional asset without upsetting enough people to lose the next election?

Seriously, instead of sacking the lot of them and hiring people who would actually do the job they repeatedly wimped out and fell back on the 100% fail method of multiple, ongoing restructures.

And that's a generation of governments, both sides. It's the ultimate "how to completely fuck an industry" history lesson:
Strip profitable elements and flog them off to someone who will at least provide necessary services with those resources.
Offer voluntary redundancies among the remaining staff to make sure you keep only the employees who won't get jobs anywhere else.
Restructure budgets to reflect apparent revenue from individual cost centers, (which is nowhere near the actual source of the revenue).
Wait a couple of years for the shape of the abject failure to change enough to require further intervention and...
Repeat.

[pete376403]

reading a column about rail in the dompost yesterday. Something that struck me - when the gisborne line was washed out in the cyclone some years back, kiwirail didn't have the $3mill necessary to repair the line. Govt wouldn't help so the line was closed, so everything now goes by truck. Govt had no problem finding $13mill to add some overtaking lanes to the roads .

[R650R]

reading a column about rail in the dompost yesterday. Something that struck me - when the gisborne line was washed out in the cyclone some years back, kiwirail didn't have the $3mill necessary to repair the line. Govt wouldn't help so the line was closed, so everything now goes by truck. Govt had no problem finding $13mill to add some overtaking lanes to the roads .

The cost is much greater than three million, theres actually four slips/washouts to fix two of them major. At the time it was last running the train was only carting fertiliser one way and empty the other. This work is now accomplished by six truck journeys a day which probably backload with squash or tomatoes and other bulk crops.
Kiwirail is mandated by the govt to make a profit so they cant fix a line making no profit even if it only cost 1$ to fix it.
Part of the line is actually reopening later this year with couple log trains on weekends, think regional council is footing the bill.
Trouble is even if the govt does foot the bill its effectivly subsidising a select few businesses transport opertations so it opens all cans of worms and precedents.
Recently the bay picked up lot of extra work after wellington quake, the several extra trains were traffic chaos with the crews trying to get them into shunting yards. God help the greens if its any indication of what all freight on rail would look like....