John MacDonald: You thought it was expensive now to travel. Just wait... - Canterbury Mornings with John MacDonald

If you think it’s expensive to travel around the country now, it’s about to get more expensive with KiwiRail ditching one of its ferries.  

But even though flying isn’t cheap, KiwiRail can forget about me making any interisland ferry bookings. Because why would ya?  

Two dungers —either of which can be out of service on any given day— no thanks.  

This all goes back to the decision by the Government not long after it came to power to pull the plug on the mega ferry project that Labour seemed to have an open cheque book for.  

Originally, the cost of getting the new mega ferries and bringing the portside infrastructure up-to-scratch was going to be around $1.5 billion.  

But that blew out to $3 billion and Finance Minister Nicola Willis said “no” when KiwiRail came knocking asking for more money.   

She said at the time that Cabinet wasn’t confident that there wouldn’t be further cost blow-outs. A bit further down the track, she washed her hands of the whole thing and handed-it over to Winston Peters who became the Minister for Rail with his number one job being to find cheaper ferries and fast.  

And, as we now know, they're expected to be here in 2029. In fact, pretty much all we know. We don't know how much they're going to cost. We also don't know how much it has cost or is going to cost the Government to get out of the original ship building contract.  

But this isn’t about the politics today. The conversation today is about KiwiRail running just two ferries on Cook Strait for the next four years, and what that’s going to mean.  

What it’s going to mean for passengers, and what it’s going to mean for people shifting freight up and down the country.  

Let’s start with passengers: there’s no doubt it’s going to get more expensive to cross the Strait. That’s just how business works.   

The Aratere does two crossings a day and can carry up to 400 passengers. So there’s 800 passengers a day that won’t be crossing. To be fair to KiwiRail, they are saying that they think the most impact on passengers will happen during the peak season.  

But, either way, it’s only going to lead to increased prices and decreased reliability.  

Then there’s the freight issue. There’s already no shortage of people saying how unreliable the Interislander has become for them getting their products to and from the North and South Islands.  

I see that road freight lobby group Transporting New Zealand is saying that the Aratere going out of service will create more risk for freight.  

Chief Executive Dom Kalasih is saying today that it will be "fascinating” to see what happens with freight with no rail-enabled ferries.  

But it’s not the lack of rail that’s going to be an issue, because guess how much freight in New Zealand is carried on trucks? Ninety percent. And a lot of them will be trucking operators that cross Cook Strait on the Interislander, competing for space paying higher prices.  

And businesses paying more will mean everybody paying more. 

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