Motorists on the Rimutaka Hill Rd will encounter fewer logging trucks from now on, but Masterton residents still face a long wait before trucks are diverted around the town.
Wellington port company CentrePort has announced 80,000 tonnes of logs from the region's forests will be transported each year by rail, starting this week.
Most of the logs will come from Forest Enterprises forests in Te Wharau, Ngahape and, if capacity allows, Te Mai.
General manager of forestry Bert Hughes said the cost of road freight was a big factor in the company making the commitment to rail.
"We think that rail is a little bit friendlier for burning fossil fuels. The cost of fuel is not huge at the moment, but you never know what's going to happen in the future."
Mr Hughes said 80,000 tonnes of logs was about 20 per cent of the total logged in the region each year, and would mean 12 to 14 fewer truck movements a day.
The region has about 68,500ha of commercial forest, of which Forest Enterprises owns about 14 per cent.
The log rail service has been 10 years in the making, with CentrePort, which is majority owned by Greater Wellington, and KiwiRail agreeing that rail wagons will be loaded at KiwiRail's Waingawa railhead, south of Masterton, and delivered to the port each weekday.
Greater Wellington Regional Council chairwoman Fran Wilde said the initiative would help with commuter traffic over the hill.
"Regular users in both directions will benefit from this new service, which is part of a wider strategy designed to
accommodate a log export trade that has nearly tripled over the past three years," she said.
But there would be little impact on logging traffic through Masterton, and a bypass was still "some time out", Ms Wilde said.
"I agree with the concerns, they are valid concerns but it will be a long time before it happens. The bypass is very much at the assessment stage, not even at the design stage."
A Masterton Eastern Bypass was included in Greater Wellington's long-term 2010 Regional Land Transport Strategy, but is not in the council's draft work programme for the next three years.
Masterton Mayor Garry Daniell said recent meetings with NZTA indicated the bypass was a low funding priority.
"We've made representations to them over a number of years that it could take the shape of a bypass. They were due to find it in the next couple of years, but I haven't heard anything recently."
Mr Daniell said the volume of logging traffic was likely to increase as forests in the region reach maturity.
He said the new log rail service, if it lessened traffic over Rimutaka Hill, would certainly reduce frustration for drivers.
"If in fact it can be economically proven that it's viable to offload trucks on to railway wagons at Waingawa then it would be a great improvement."
Regional councillor Gary McPhee said the move was positive for Wairarapa, "and especially for for people who have been stuck behind large trucks on the hill".
Mr McPhee said Waingawa was the right spot for the service as there was room to grow there.