Gisborne rail service viable and essential

(reproduced from "Hawke's Bay Today", 20th October 2015 edition)


Talking Point – Rail Service Viable and Essential

By Alan Dick - 

 “The immediate challenge however is how to handle the “wall of wood” from the Wairoa forest” 

In your article “Nash talks up re-opening of rail link” (Monday, October 19), MP Craig Foss, as a determined opponent of rail, is quoted: “The evidence was that the line was hardly being used before the washout.” He added: “Businesses were choosing not to use the line and had been choosing not to for many years.” He is wrong. 

In fact, in the immediate period leading up to the washouts, three or more fully loaded trains were moving squash and other products from Gisborne to Napier Port – and demand was such that double the number of trains could have been running except that KiwiRail could not provide the required locos, wagons and drivers. 

What had happened? From 2010, all Hawke’s Bay and East Coast MP’s, with the exception of minister Foss, had been urging businesses to use rail. Correctly sensing demand, KiwiRail spent $300,000 to lower the bed of three tunnels, to finally enable full capacity 40ft high-cube containers to be carried on the line.

Brand new high-cube curtainsider wagons, for palletised traffic, in Gisborne in 2012

Then entrepreneurial Gisborne-based transport operator Steve Weatherell (running 80 trucks nationally) took the opportunity as a freight forwarder to shift his customers’ product from road to rail. 

For his customers, a smooth, damage-free ride for their sensitive product and direct movement of full containers from packhouse to portside without repacking or double handling. 

For Weatherell Transport, better service for their customers and avoiding a difficult road. For Hawke’s Bay and Gisborne, dual transport mode choice, reduced heavy traffic congestion on a difficult route, and consequently safety and environmental benefits. 

Weatherell Transport tripled tonnage on the Gisborne railway in early 2012, demonstrating how effective other operators can be at securing freight contracts for the rail network

What a tragedy when the washouts struck in March, 2012. Avoidable with proper attention to culvert and drainage maintenance, had the line remained intact KiwiRail would have now had a fully viable rail business with all the resultant environmental and economic benefits for our region. 

 

High-cube containers enroute from Napier to Gisborne, 2012

That takes us to today. 

The Gisborne container freight market potential remains and, in fact, will grow with a wood processing hub to be established. 

Gisborne Port is a specialised log exporter but is unlikely to ever attract export container ship calls. Napier is the logical container destination, being closer than Tauranga. 

The immediate challenge, however, is how to handle the “wall of wood” from the Wairoa forest harvests, which will ramp up dramatically over the next few years. Not including logs, which will continue to move by road to processors like Pan Pac, Wairoa export log harvests will move from 323,000 tonnes next year to a million tonnes and more from 2020. 

Forest managers believe that conservatively half of that volume can, and should, move by rail from a log hub at Wairoa to Napier Port. there will still be plenty of work for truckers, moving logs on short trips from the harvest sites to the log hub and carrying extra volumes direct to the port.

High-cube containers being transferred from road to rail in Gisborne. Rail is the only transport mode able to move these fully loaded from Gisborne to Napier, and without it, growth of the local economy is hampered

There is a viable business for a rail operator on the East Coast line, based initially just on Wairoa logs alone but with heritage steam tourism and Gisborne container potential. KiwiRail have at least two such proposals on their desk. 

 

New Zealand's newest shortline operator, the Gisborne City Vintage Railway, is set to commence operations between Gisborne Port and Muriwai from November 2015

And the worst case outcome? KiwiRail rejects the rail freight proposals in favour of a lease to cycle or golf cart tourism promoters.

The then consequence of State Highway 2 having to handle quadrupled log volumes will be heavy traffic congestion from a road transport industry with insufficient capacity to cope, the road being wrecked, tragic deaths and injuries from accidents, and game-changing opportunity for the economic and social development of northern Hawke’s Bay lost forever. It can’t be allowed to happen. 

High-cube containers travelling south from Gisborne by rail, 2012

* Alan Dick is a Hawke’s Bay regional councillor, former Napier mayor and is chairman of the Hawke’s Bay regional transport committee. 

(All photos courtesy Napier-Gisborne Railway Ltd)