Mike Hosking: Te Huia is a disaster, time to pull the pin

The question for those who supported Te Huia and still do, is just what is it you expect to happen to turn around the atrocious figures as laid bare in the Chamber of Commerce report into the train's so far disastrous start?   
The one change is that the train gets a bit closer to Auckland itself than it originally did. That just leads to the question, why didn’t you do that from the start?  Or why didn't you delay the start until you could do it? 
You don’t need five years to work out whether it works or not. The reason they give it five years is it gives them breathing space to offer excuses in the hope of a miracle. 
It is yet another example of money we don’t have funnelled out on ideological nonsense any 12-year-old could see was never going to get off the ground. A trip that costs more and is slower than the car is dead from day one. Dead from day one in theory as well as reality, in other words you didn’t even need to take the next step. You are offering a lesser, more expensive, and a slower option to an issue that many would argue doesn’t even exist. 
The assumption, of course, being that even if the train could get you to Auckland itself, you somehow get yourself about the place at no cost. Another fanciful proposition. 
The reduction in carbon emissions can be improved if the passenger numbers rise. That's a big if. 
So all you are left with, if you think about it, is time. Somehow magically time, and time alone, will make people take a train. The train won't change and the speed won't change. I suppose they could make it free and have all of us pay for it, so at least the cost would drop. 
By the way, don’t rule that out. Russ Rimmington, the Regional Council head, stood next to those public transport geniuses Michael Wood and Jacinda Ardern on the day of launch, was asked what they would do if it didn’t work. He said "we'll give tickets away." 
Maybe he knew it wouldn't work and was pre-announcing already signed of policy under the guise of a joke? We just thought it was a joke. And as it potentially turns out, a joke that’s on us. 
The trick now is not to, as is so often the trait of this sort of thinking, leadership, and governance, to dig in and bury your head. The trick is to be honest, accept you were wrong, and pull the pin. 
Some of us saw it from the start, for some it took the report, but it's the same thing, ultimately. A bad idea that didn’t work, never will, so cut your losses.

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