Sadly, Lyall McFarlane’s article on rail (ODT 11.10.22) focusing as it does solely on speed and profit, is as narrow as the rail gauge he laments.
Speed is not essential to business — fortunes were made and lost when crossing the Tasman took two weeks by steamer and there was no telephone.
Of my last three trips to Wellington, two were by car and the Picton ferry, took around 55 hours each all up and were very pleasant and relaxing. And I could see a couple of clients in Christchurch on the way!
The last trip was by air, most of that time was spent in queues, and was five hours of hell.
Fifty years ago of course you could take the train — noon — from Dunedin, catch the ferry from Lyttelton and arrive in Wellington at 7am. Nineteen hours total .
When we consider that passenger rail is "uneconomic" we are taking uneconomic in a very narrow sense. If more rail usage were to save a billion or two dollars on roading, the economics start looking very different. With the road network from Picton to Christchurch subject to slips and earthquakes on an ongoing basis, the cost of that disruption could be slashed with a new passenger/cargo ferry direct to Lyttelton.
But a narrow view setting rail as a stand-alone service takes no account of this — which is why we have public services.
Public services are there because the service is essential to society and because for the most part they do not pay. We have public health which does not "pay" — because the alternative is people dying in the street. We have state schools which cost us vast amounts of taxpayer dollars because we want people to be educated, because modern life requires it to work, indeed to pay the taxes that funds it. We have a public police force which costs a huge amount, because we don’t want to be beaten up in the streets.
And we need a resilient, diverse, public transport system because in an uncertain world, relying on a private enterprise system geared to maximise profits not service simply does not serve our needs.
As climate change increases its impact, the need for that diversity is not only to reduce emissions — which it will do — but to provide certainty for all of us — in business and as individuals.
And because train is the best and nicest and most comfortable way to travel the world has ever known — why wouldn’t we do it.
— Tony Williams is a Dunedin businessman.
