A109 Light Utility Helicopter flight with mayor Gisborne City from the air in November 2023.
Do you think the Swiss weren't aware of costs and economic risk when they built the Gotthard tunnel 57km long and 2.3km deep under the Alps? They were, and they still built at unfathomable cost because they did not want trucks polluting their country and destroying their roads. This was
a decision based on vision.
The discussion around this region's stretch of railroad is basically flawed, stuck in mid-20th century Thatcherite logic. The stretch is part of a national rail network and the whole network benefits from maintaining it as a whole, even if some parts “may bring in less money”.
I was flabbergasted when this part of national infrastructure was left to fall into disrepair — unthinkable in any other OECD country. I am even more flabbergasted that there is a debate over whether it needs to be repaired or even rebuilt. The money to fix it is stolen from the budget to maintain it in the first place.
We have a historic opportunity to catch up on the woeful state of our national rail grid. For any company to profit, it needs to invest. Money will never be cheaper to borrow than now, and the need to stimulate our economy by investment has never been higher. This is a simple leadership question. “Build it and they will come.”
If we want to be credible as a low-carbon nation we need to truly reduce our carbon footprint, not just look better by planting more trees. Taking thousands of trucks off the road is a no-brainer; without needing to let investment in our roading network go down.
