The boss of one of New Zealand’s largest listed transport and logistics companies has suggested that some road user charges should be applied to the future of rail, rather than seeing it as a taxpayer-funded benefit.
Mainfreight Groups managing director Don Braid made the suggestion in a television interview with Corin Dann on the Q & A programme yesterday.
Braid also suggested that a high-speed passenger train network between Whangarei and Hamilton would negate the housing bubble in Auckland by feeding people into and out of the city.
Mainfreight has increased its spend on KiwiRail by 100% in the last five to six years according to Braid.
“What we need in this country are a transport policy and a transport strategy, and that involves rail, road and ports. And they’re all linked together,” he says.
“We’ve got a railway that’s a fixed cost, and it doesn’t have the volume on it that it needs to have on it. And the port strategy has a role to play with that,” says Braid.
“The way we see it is that this country needs good transport infrastructure. Unfortunately, we’ve got government ministers like Steven Joyce thinking that this is all about Mainfreight’s benefit,” he says.
It’s not to Mainfreight’s benefit; it’s to New Zealand’s benefit that we get a railway that works,” says Braid.
“You take what we move on rail today and move that back on to the road; that would be another 21,000 trucks a year. That’s ludicrous. Our roading infrastructure won’t hold up to that,” he says.
“We’ve got an increasing population. If we had high-speed passenger rail between Hamilton and Whangarei, we’d feed Auckland, we’d take the housing bubble out of the situation,” says Braid.
“All we’ve got to do is have a government with a transport strategy that involves that.”
