It has to be said that the Greens are a weird bunch, a mix of looney man-made climate change nutters and loopy socialist activists. The one thing they have in common is the desire to tax middle and higher-income earners to the hilt. They openly admit that tax is love. Without it, they are unable to fund their insane ideas. They’re insane because most of them are impractical and financially unsustainable. I doubt they’d know a business case if it hit them in the face. The only case they would recognise is a suitcase and they’d prefer that went on a train or bus rather than in the boot of your car.
Their transport policy must have been dreamed up during a night on the devil’s cabbage marijuana. You couldn’t make it up over a cup of tea. Most of it is completely unrealistic, particularly their proposals for rail. If they were ever to get implemented there would need to be billions in subsidies to cover operating costs. The evidence for this is the fact that the heyday for rail was from the 1920s to the early 1960s. In the early 1920s when the population was only just over one million NZR was carrying 28 million passengers a year.
The Greens are far from being on track when it comes to rail.
Photoshopped image credit The BFD
During those years when the roads were not of today’s standard and there were no motorways rail was the preferred means of travel. With the advent of motorways, better roads generally and the increasing availability of the car, rail travel became less popular. Since then only Wellington has continually maintained good patronage on its commuter service and more recently there has been a revival in popularity in Auckland.
I don’t know if the Greens are basing their bizarre plans for rail countrywide on Auckland but if they are they’re not comparing apples with apples. First there is the difference in population density and second long distance rail is an entirely different kettle of fish from local commuter trips. Even though the population has grown five fold since rail’s heyday the popularity and convenience of the car will ensure it never returns to those times when it was economic.
I love trains and the environmental reasons the Greens put forward are perfectly legitimate. Unfortunately the economic case, if they cared to do one, would not stack up. The country could not afford the subsidies that would be required to prop up these services. Phase one is to use existing stock. A problem right there. People will not be attracted to a mode of transport that will get them to a destination not much quicker than the convenience of using their car.
Trains to Tauranga and Rotorua were tried at the beginning of this century but were unprofitable and the Government was not prepared to subsidise them. We are already pouring billions into rail to keep it going and the Greens plans would see billions more having to be made available. The Hamilton to Auckland slow train, when it finally starts, will give an indication of how successful this type of service might be.
The Greens talk as though what they propose is something that will be enormously popular and trains will be packed to the gunwales. Quite the opposite will most likely be the case. Their rail plans appear to be, as usual, purely ideologically driven with no thought to the cost/benefit ratio. They appear to have sat down, lit a ciggie or two, and wet their knickers dreaming up something which looks like they think we are akin to the UK.
They are well and truly off the rails.
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