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frankv:Or, to put it another way, we've saved money in the short term, without thinking about the long-term. Just like roads. Just like Auckland public transport.
As Raymond Chen would say, "I'm sure someone got a nice bonus for that".
Oh dear. Auckland rail closures due to heat. Sorry say again. HEAT. LOL.😂
Try running A Rail service in WA, SA, NT, VIC, NSW, QLD and Australian outback ☀️🌞 🌞
Heat. They don’t know what heat is and its effects on rail.
Why don’t they bring in one of those famous consultants every NZ bureaucracy likes to employ but bring them in from an Australian rail service provider. They will sort them out.
Whilst the difficult we can do immediately, the impossible takes a bit longer. However, miracles you will have to wait for.
FineWine:
Oh dear. Auckland rail closures due to heat. Sorry say again. HEAT. LOL.😂
Try running A Rail service in WA, SA, NT, VIC, NSW, QLD and Australian outback ☀️🌞 🌞
Heat. They don’t know what heat is and its effects on rail.
Why don’t they bring in one of those famous consultants every NZ bureaucracy likes to employ but bring them in from an Australian rail service provider. They will sort them out.
Like anything, you need to define your operating conditions. Australia will obviously be designing for higher maximum temperatures, but probably also higher minimums.
But it's not just the peak temperature. The bigger the gap between minimum and maximum, the more engineering and cost is involved. Too cold causes bigger problems; rails break.
We could design it for -30 to +50C ambient; there are places that see those kinds of temperature swings. But then people will whinge that we're spending too much money and gold-plating it, because we're not building a railway across a desert/steppe that sees snowstorms.
Is it a screw-up? Sure. But it's probably not as simple as saying 'lol australia hotter'.
Never seen 14 Helicopters fighting one fire before!
(Christchurch Port Hills as of 8pm 140224)
(Courtesy of Flightradar24)
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Cook Strait ferries. This huge cancellation is going come back and bite any government in the tail.
What I can not understand is why the land base rebuilding is costing approx 3 times the cost of two brand new ferries.
We have to have a reliable and robust transport system between our two islands even if it costs big time to provide and run. The connection is vital to our GDP.
This is the same short term thinking that occurred with our rail network. Now it is costing billions to upkeep and upgrade our road system.
Whilst the difficult we can do immediately, the impossible takes a bit longer. However, miracles you will have to wait for.
FineWine:
Cook Strait ferries. This huge cancellation is going come back and bite any government in the tail.
What I can not understand is why the land base rebuilding is costing approx 3 times the cost of two brand new ferries.
We have to have a reliable and robust transport system between our two islands even if it costs big time to provide and run. The connection is vital to our GDP.
This is the same short term thinking that occurred with our rail network. Now it is costing billions to upkeep and upgrade our road system.
On the flip side, we've got two strait operators, one of which seems to need to be propped up by the Govt, the other one does not.
Both could run twice the number of boats each and still be fully booked out.
Technofreak: It's been this hot before and we've not had this problem with rail services. I have a feeling there's more to this than meets the eye.
geoffwnz:
FineWine:
Cook Strait ferries. This huge cancellation is going come back and bite any government in the tail.
What I can not understand is why the land base rebuilding is costing approx 3 times the cost of two brand new ferries.
We have to have a reliable and robust transport system between our two islands even if it costs big time to provide and run. The connection is vital to our GDP.
This is the same short term thinking that occurred with our rail network. Now it is costing billions to upkeep and upgrade our road system.
On the flip side, we've got two strait operators, one of which seems to need to be propped up by the Govt, the other one does not.
Both could run twice the number of boats each and still be fully booked out.
The issue with the ferry replacement project is that the Interisland Line requires one or more rail ferries.
There are extremely few places other than Cook Strait where ferries carry trains across the high seas, so they can't buy a cheap second-hand one, it has to be a bespoke build just for NZ. Vehicle and passenger ferries are relatively common, Kiwirail could most likely continue to buy well-used ferries with maybe a decade of life left in the hull, although they would be relatively expensive to run and maintain - this is what they've been doing for the last thirty years or so.
I'd guess that two new rail-capable ferries would cost a lot less than twice as much as one, and by up-sizing Kiwirail were able to reduce the fleet from three to two whilst still maintaining the cross-strait cargo volume.
If the current government won't stump up for new rail ferries, then the eventual outcome would be that the cross-strait rail link will be lost when the current rail ferry reaches end of life. If that happens, then the rail lines from Picton to Christchurch will be redundant and the tracks & signalling infrastructure will be decommissioned. I suspect that would have a very bad downward effect on rail freight volumes into and out of Wellington, and a correspondingly big upwards impact on road freight volumes.
This does not seem to me to be a Good Thing.
PolicyGuy:
If the current government won't stump up for new rail ferries, then the eventual outcome would be that the cross-strait rail link will be lost when the current rail ferry reaches end of life. If that happens, then the rail lines from Picton to Christchurch will be redundant and the tracks & signalling infrastructure will be decommissioned. I suspect that would have a very bad downward effect on rail freight volumes into and out of Wellington, and a correspondingly big upwards impact on road freight volumes.
This does not seem to me to be a Good Thing.
And price of goods going up for consumers. But that is not a road, so the current National government won't entertain the idea of forward thinking and will make New Zealanders suffer in 20 years time when we do have to get those ferry and infrastructure done.
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Ge0rge:
Wairarapa trains have been having heat related issues for the last decade at least. I guess when its only a handful of hick towns with a few thousand people each, it doesn't make national news.
To be fair, most Aucklanders would struggle to locate the Wairarapa on a map.
Ge0rge:Technofreak: It's been this hot before and we've not had this problem with rail services. I have a feeling there's more to this than meets the eye.
Wairarapa trains have been having heat related issues for the last decade at least. I guess when its only a handful of hick towns with a few thousand people each, it doesn't make national news.
No argument there. My point was rail services in Auckland haven't been disrupted previously like this to my knowledge, yet temperatures have been as high or higher.
Blaming temperatures doesn't explain what's going on. Something else has happened. With all the rail infrastructure upgrades that have taken place in Auckland could it be possible that NZ Rail have cheaped out or had a design failure with the upgrades resulting in inferior infrastructure?
Me thinks someone is covering their posterior.
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PolicyGuy:
If the current government won't stump up for new rail ferries, then the eventual outcome would be that the cross-strait rail link will be lost when the current rail ferry reaches end of life. If that happens, then the rail lines from Picton to Christchurch will be redundant and the tracks & signalling infrastructure will be decommissioned. I suspect that would have a very bad downward effect on rail freight volumes into and out of Wellington, and a correspondingly big upwards impact on road freight volumes.
This does not seem to me to be a Good Thing.
I thought the issue at the centre of this was the spiralling cost of the land based infrastructure not the cost of the ferries per se. I think we really pay through the nose with a lot of our infrastructure upgrades.
Another case in point being the remediation of the Te Rapa to Taupiri section of the Waikato Expressway. It will likely take longer to fix than it took to build. The repairs started mid to late 2022 and were supposed to be finished by March 2023. Now the expect finish date is March 2025. I shudder to think what the cost will be and that's not counting the cost of countless hours of time wasted by motorists who get delayed every day on this stretch of road.
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PolicyGuy:
If the current government won't stump up for new rail ferries, then the eventual outcome would be that the cross-strait rail link will be lost when the current rail ferry reaches end of life.
Aratere arguably already is end of life. It's 25 years old and has a terrible operational history.
Right from the start they should have got Hyundai to build one rail capable ferry the same size as Aratere to replace it. They could have then replaced Kaitaki and Kaiarahi with two second hand ferries of similar size. Okay, a fleet of three is more expensive to operate than a fleet of two, but this solution would have minimised the capital outlay and eliminated the need for expensive new port side infrastructure. It simply beggars belief that they signed a contract for the new huge ferries and started building terminal infrastructure without any certainty of government funding.
I use the interisland ferries three times a year but had a terrible experience with Interislander over Christmas, so will be using Bluebridge in future.
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