Best of 2024: Transport planner details the feasibility of new Cook Strait links

One transport planner is looking into the feasibility of a fixed link between New Zealand's two islands.

KiwiRail are officially cancelling an overseas contract for building more mega-ferries, after the Government declined to foot the bill.

Nicolas Reid, the Principal Public Transport Planner for MRCagney, says there are other options available to cross the Cook Strait.

"There's options around the existing ferries and expanding those ferries, and also moving to a fixed link such as a bridge or a tunnel."

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudgin
from News Talks dB so as.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Can we rail enters talks to terminate plans for the
new inter islander fairies. One transport planner has been looking
into the feasibility of a fixed link between the two islands.
Would a bridge or a tunnel be a viable option?
Nicholas Read is the principal public transport planner for m
R Cagney and he joins me now, good morning, Nicholas,
good to have you with us.

Speaker 3 (00:33):
Good morning for Chessca.

Speaker 2 (00:35):
If we are looking for a better option than what
we have, what are our options well.

Speaker 3 (00:41):
To cross the strait, There's a whole lot of options
we could consider, various scales of cost and impact on
the environment in the economy. Certainly there's options around the
existing ferries and expanding those ferries and also moving to

(01:01):
a fixed link such as a bridge or a tunnel.

Speaker 2 (01:05):
What are the main obstacle calls facing a fixed link
between the North and the South Islands.

Speaker 3 (01:11):
The main obstacle is in the nature of the strait itself.
Cook straight is very wide and it is very deep.
It's up to two hundred meters deep over to hundred
meters deep in places, and over twenty two kilometers at
the closest point. So it is a very large gulf
of water to bridge or tunnel under.

Speaker 2 (01:32):
Could you put a bridge in?

Speaker 3 (01:34):
The short answer is no, it would be a bridge
of the lakes the world has never seen. It is
just simply too far and too deep. There are some
places that have very long bridges, but they are more
like viaducts. Effectively, they're sitting in tens of meters of
water and they're supported below from piles. We're talking over

(01:54):
two hundred meters deep, where you just can't physically build
a bridge of that length in that depth.

Speaker 2 (02:02):
And I suppose, as you mentioned, if you did, you'd
want to build it from the shortest point, you know,
from the shortest points, but then there probably is no
infrastructure at those points. There's nowhere for there's no roads
already or rail or anything like that in place.

Speaker 3 (02:20):
That's correat and the shortest point is actually off to
one of the islands of the Sounds and not actually
the mainland itself, So then you'd be into the position
of having it off that island onto the South Island
proper and indeed on both sides, the western side of
Wellington the eastern side of Picton. That is that's remote country,

(02:42):
very hard rain. There's barely a gravel road in those areas,
let alone the kind of connections, the need of national network.

Speaker 2 (02:50):
Okay, so tricky to build a bridge. What about a tunnel?

Speaker 3 (02:55):
Yeah, surprisingly, a tunnel appears to be feasible. A cook
straight tunnel wouldn't be the longest tunnel in the world,
and it wouldn't be the deepest, but it would be
close on both accounts. So it would be still a
very very large project to deliver that sort of tunnel.

Speaker 2 (03:16):
And what would the tunnel cater to Would it be
able to take cars and trains or would you have
to refine it down.

Speaker 3 (03:27):
Yeah, all of the really large tunnels of this kind
of scope are rail tunnels, not road tunnels, because the
rail tunnels a lot easier to build, and they're lots
safer and easy to operate on those extreme sorts of
lengths and debts. So if we're talking about a practical,

(03:48):
technically feasible option, it would be a rail tunnel.

Speaker 2 (03:52):
Were keywise, we like practical nicholas, don't we. And so
when you say safer. In other words, if you've got
railway lines going through there, you've got less possibility for
I suppose crashes or an ax or I suppose I've
also got to think a little bit about fumes and
things like.

Speaker 3 (04:12):
That exactly that. Yeah, you know, individual vehicles, individual drivers
a lot more chance of crashers. You've got a lot
more people in there with the higher fire risks from
private vehicles, and then the issues of how do you
manage a situation like that with evacuations with all potentially

(04:36):
hundreds of individual vehicles in place. With a railway, it's
more of a controlled system. They have a lot more
ability to manage situations like that.

Speaker 2 (04:46):
What about our tendants, our fault lines and earthquake risks
and things like that, Does that come into play or
have engineers been able to safely around the world build
tunnels and environments like ours.

Speaker 3 (05:01):
Yeah, So the leaders in this kind of space are
the Japanese, who have currently the longest underwater tunnel in
the world between their main island and the Norman Island.
And that is a very active part of the world
when it comes to fault lines, volcanoes, and earthquakes. As

(05:21):
we probably all know, and they manage it so it
is possible.

Speaker 2 (05:28):
Yeah, I'm so. I imagine the benefit then of having
a tunnel as it's going to be faster and we
could always put you can put your car on a train,
can't you that that's a service that can be operated,
so if you were going from one arm to the next.
I imagine the main benefit of it is that we're
going to be able to have a lot more traffic
traveling back and forward, and it's faster. It would add productivity.

Speaker 3 (05:52):
Yeah, that's right, it would. The operation would be like
the Channel Tunnel between Great Britain and France. It's a
rail tunnel. Passenger and freight trains can run straight through
and those will save a lot of time themselves. And
they also get operate a shuttle train system for cars
and trucks which would load onto the oversized train cars

(06:14):
at one end, run through and unload in the other.
So we're talking about getting down from about three and
a half hours ish plus loading time on the ferries
down to about forty minutes.

Speaker 2 (06:27):
Okay, so that's that's the benefit. But something tells me, Neicholas,
it's not going to be cheap building a tunnel in
a very deep straight.

Speaker 3 (06:35):
No, unfortunately, because you know, it looks technically feasible for sure,
but we if you look at the projects like that
Psych tunnel in Japan and the Channel Tunnel in Great Britain,
taking the cost of those projects, working them forward into
today's dollars, we're looking at minimum fifty billion dollar project,

(06:58):
possibly double that, and that alone just you know, good idea,
it would work well, but it's just completely infeasible from
an economic perspective.

Speaker 2 (07:10):
That is a hard sell. So all and all in really,
the ferry crossing is probably still the most viable option
in trying to improve that.

Speaker 3 (07:19):
Yes, the fairies are it. The feares are what we're
going to be needing to use going forward, So it
is about making that work.

Speaker 2 (07:26):
Yeh oh, look, thank you so much for your time
this morning, Nicholas, I really appreciate.

Speaker 3 (07:30):
Ith No way, thank you.

Speaker 2 (07:32):
Right, So there we go. That solves that. No, bridge
tunnels too expensive. Back to the fairies. Oh no, we're
not getting your ferries just yet.

Speaker 1 (07:43):
How are you donking for more from the Sunday session
with Francesca Rudkin, listen live to us talks. It'd be
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