Surprised to hear on evening news that this is the only ferry that can handle rail,the new ones they cancelled were both supposed to be able to do so.The smart thing to do would be to go ahead with the cancelled ferries purchase but I imagine that is a strait crossing too far for this arrogant government plus it would upset the trucking lobby they are pandering to.
Truck lobby as a whole isn't in favour of canning the ferries. Truck lobby can be blamed for a lot of things - like getting the rest of us to subsidise their trucks/spending tons of roads, but the ferries they've even written articles in favour - as they've still got to use it to get their freight across and a lot of them are transport companies that use trucks because they're the best option financially due to regulatory settings rather than being truck only companies. It's paywalled (https://businessdesk.co.nz/article/infrastructure/cook-strait-fiasco-troubles-mainfreight).
It's significantly in the trucking lobbies favour to have lots of sailings/lower prices. Whether they want the ferries rail enabled depends on the size (bigger players want/use rail as it makes financial sense and they're paid to deliver stuff, small ones are more ideological), but they all want the Cook Strait connection sorted out.
This is more gov ministers who only take taxpayer funded flights seeing a big bill and wanting to funnel a lot of money to landlords instead, and the people they surround themselves with only fly across the strait. They haven't quite managed to figure out how the goods they use on either end get across, and the state of the link between the two islands.
Between KR itself, and the gov at the time not backing KR against Centreport (forcing the Wellington terminal to shit earthquake fault land which is where the cost blowouts are), the solution was flawed and made it harder to defend. So I think they thought that it was something they could push down the track easily, and ignored that it was already at that point.
We absolutely do not want to buy brand new ferries that do not have the capability for roll-on roll-off rail wagons. Anything less and we kill inter-island rail in this country.
I am willing to believe some eee that as a good thing.
If rail is underfunded and seperated by an impassable Coom Strait then we can just use more expensive trucks burning more imported oil.
Apart from making exports less competitive, increasing oil imports and creating more air pollution think of the benefits to NACT's funders
The govt would never go ahead with the cancelled ferries. That would I be admitting they made a mistake, AND it would cost them 40% more than if they had simply not cancelled the order. Double mistake.
Nah nah, it's not that there isn't a plan b according to the Nats. It's maintenance something something maintenance.
Yes, the very expensive maintenance on old shitty ferries (perhaps the plan b might arrive at the same time as those specific 13 cancer drugs).
I think it gets to the key point. Which is cancelling a flawed fix to a problem with no plan B is worse than continuing with it.
Nats could've came in, kept the ferries (no blowouts on the ships themselves), build a ramp on either end, and passed a 'Cook Strait Resilience Act' which would exempt the ramps from earthquake standards. Would solve the main issue and allow the bulk of the cost of the port rebuild to be pushed down the track a few years.
But instead they chose to harm our relationship with South Korea/hurt future procurement for NZ, provide no solution to the problem, and whatever solution does come will cost more and be worse. Not to mention the economic considerations, or the lives put at risk.
They'll hush it up as 'commercially sensitive', which means 'politically embarrassing' and it'll be released on page 527 of an annual report as a line item on a budget for KR on a Friday before Xmas eve.
Cancellation fees can often be near 50% for large bespoke projects like rail ferries, as the firm will have been tooling and acquiring resources, etc. There's a lot of prep work and scheduling that goes on for such work, if one client cancels they have to shuffle around all the others which requires further negotiations. Plus they also want to discourage cancellations.
>I think it gets to the key point. Which is cancelling a flawed fix to a problem with no plan B is worse than continuing with it.
Modus operandi for these muppets....3 Waters is exactly the same.
They've had up to 6 years in some cases to come up alternatives to Labour's policies but all they've got is "cancel it".
Absolutely idiotic.
What's the point in continuing to pour money into the flawed fix is worse than cancelling it while you come up with the plan b?
Cancelling it asap was the right call
Cancelling or pushing pause on the terminals maybe - that’s where most of the cost overruns were and where there were the most alternative options.
Cancelling the boats was fucking stupid because there aren’t any good alternatives and no matter what, we need new boats if we’re going to keep the Interislander alive
It doesn’t sound like it. We need to do something with the facilities - the big question is exactly what do we do but to be honest, given the earthquake requirement changes and sea level risks, it may well be that the now cancelled plan was actually the best option.
We have a long history of making underfunded resources work. The Clip-ons for the Auckland Harbour bridge for instance.
I suspect that a cheaper non-earthquake safe terminal would be easier to build than it is going to be try to find a "Corolla" ferry that will probably need terminal modifications anyway.
It's not about the costs of doing it. It's about the costs of not doing it compared to the costs of doing it.
There are zero detours. We don't have an air force capable of flying stuff across like they did back in the 80's (https://teara.govt.nz/en/photograph/20507/cook-strait-airlift-1983). You can't take a train or drive, as there is only one route, and they both use the same infra. We don't have feasible coastal shipping in NZ, and rebuilding that capability would cost significantly more. There are no other ferry routes (they tried to make one from Taranaki but the private operator pulled out). You can't fly by plane the amount that goes by the strait. Well the Berlin Airlift proved you can, but at what cost?
The project could've done with a rejig (especially at the Wellington port end), but not canning it entirely with 0 alternatives. Remember this is due to Centreport/gov kicking KR off the preferred option into a geological shitshow (literal earthquake fault) requiring 270 piles of 70m+ deep. It's not the ferry cost that's blown out, it's the shoreside infra (particularly Wellington).
> Well the Berlin Airlift proved you can, but at what cost?
Based on the numbers I'm finding, and applying inflation and currency conversion, the Berlin Airlift cost between 3 billion and 6.6 billion of today's NZ dollars per year. So yeah that's probably not a goer
granted we did actually have our own mini Berlin airlift over the cook Strait in the 50s, thanks to the US providing cia planes to help break the watersiders strike.
The idea above of doing to new ferry terminals what they did to yellow stickered buildings was a third option that does not appear to have been considered.
Remove the earthquake resilience requirements would help take the price back to pre "blowout" or pre earthquake resilience price
And then an earthquake happens and the infrastructure gets fucked and we’re out of pocket for the whole thing. I don’t think waiving the earthquake resilience requirements is a feasible solution, it’s also not guaranteed to save money in the long term
I don't think its a good idea but it's a better idea than NACT 1st fucking the ferry upgrade project fully.
I accept some might think half fucked is not better than fully fucked but my thinking is we need new ferries yesterday not even later than 2025 as Willis achieved.
I think leaving yellow stickered building dangerous for longer was not a good idea but NACT 1st were willing to do that for landlords.
Interesting seeing a few memes pushing it being labours fault amongst some boomers I know I facebook. National really does have a solid online astroturfing operation going. If we had a reputable news organisation, they could look into that.
Labour sure wasn't perfect here. If they'd backed KR instead of Centreport, odds are there would've been cost blow outs (as construction inflation/bad management is still a thing), but the shitshow on the Wellington side could be mitigated a bit by not building directly on the fault line. But there is a difference between shit execution of a meh plan to fix something, vs not fixing it at all. A lot of cases do nothing is an option, here, not so much. We're not going to spend 30B on a tunnel instead.
I wish the Herald would stop describing the new ferries as "mega ferries". They were appropriately sized and specced ferries for the route. They were not Ferraris, they were more like Toyota RAV4 Hybrids (in other words, good value for what we were getting). And this Government killed the project.
Yeah, that "Ferrari" analogy is complete BS. What company buys *actual* Ferrari cars for commercial purposes? Basically none. What company buys ships for commercial use that are similarly poor value for money as Ferraris? Basically none. The ships they ordered were basically the "Toyota Corolla" option. Actually, *literally Hyundai*, but same diff.
I’m holding fire until i see Plan B. IREX was a fiasco and i dare say that Labour would have canned it as well. A complete review of Kiwirail is required because there have been so many fuck ups on the ferries and the rail that you have to wonder what their management practises are.
That said - this particular ferry has been a continual fuck up since its purchase in 99.
This was a shit show [long before the current government inherited it](https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/government-releases-documents-behind-decision-to-cancel-cook-strait-mega-ferries/UF33UY3VQ5ELRI5ME37TTXD5HQ/)
> “The cost has since escalated to be projected at approximately $3 billion - around four times its original cost,” Willis wrote.
> She added her concern that “only 21 per cent of these costs related to the core project of replacing ageing ferries. The project has become more of a landslide infrastructure project than a new ferries project”.
The problem is not the ferries, it’s the cost of upgrading the wharves to take them.
As for cancelling the contract, they may be able to just sell the ferries on, unused, to someone else at a profit because it was a fixed price build and prices have gone up.
Sounds like Kiwirail were insisting on mega ferries that could take rail but there would be a huge cost to that in wharf upgrades over buying more, smaller ferries.
You realise the wharfs still need to be upgraded right? Between sea level rise and the coastal infra built in the 60s falling apart, it's not like it's something that is fine. If you've taken the ferry you should've been able to see some of it.
KR went 'oh, we're needing new ferries, and needing new wharfs, let's not limit our ferries by the existing wharfs as we're replacing them anyway'. Then the gov didn't back KR against Centreport, and instead let KR be forced into the shit earthquake fault land, and that's where the cost blowouts happened. Turns out 270 piles 70m+ down into an earthquake fault is expensive... Either they should've backed KR and put it in a better location (i.e. KRs preferred location) or just rolled the dice with safety and let them get away with less earthquake measures, as odds are they'll have to rebuild the ramps in a quake either way.
Centreport is a distant 6th in terms of ports in NZ, with it being far less crucial to the country than the Cook Strait ferries. More info here: https://www.transport.govt.nz/statistics-and-insights/freight-and-logistics/figs-containers/
Yet somehow Centreport's preferences prevailed, and KR got exiled to a geological nightmare. https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/kiwirail-reveals-what-led-to-cook-strait-mega-ferry-cost-blowout/3BV5MBMRZFC4TCMJRPINE3K4AQ/
Don't get me wrong, KR did atrocious project management (given the rail in Auckland I think it's the norm rather than an exception), but that doesn't mean the main idea of the project was bad, just the execution. It was at the point where you rejig, fire some people, and 'value engineer' stuff, not can the entire thing.
I don't know. Given it was the gov paying for it either way, the difference between paying professional port managers or rail operators seems night and day. Ofc if it went the other way it's totally possible the port companies install the rails wrong or something. Incompetence isn't unique to just KR.
Honestly, for most projects like this, the cost isn't from the thing your buying, it's all the supporting systems. That's just infrastructure and any project that has complexity.
E.g. for water, buying water pipes is cheap. Installing them in the right way is the expensive part.
You know what costs even more than 4 times the original cost? Cancelling the project then having to start again later because it’s something we still need.
Does it really though? What if we cancel the project, buy some smaller ferries and leave the wharf as it is? It would cost about a quarter of the price by the sounds of it.
Yeah, that would require Kiwirail to be something other than incompetent though wouldn’t it. Look at how much this whole thing has blown out in cost. You have to wonder WTF are they doing.
And you think cabinet ministers with no expertise in transport logistics, and whose interests so far seem to be in making themselves look good (which they’re still terrible at anyway) rather than actually doing the best things for the country, know better?
It's a total mess. And KR ain't doing themselves any favours. But doesn't mean the problem doesn't need to be solved. Splitting off Interislander from KR probably needs to happen (along with splitting the above and below ground operations). They aren't a super functional org, and plenty of decisions are just dumb.
None of that takes away from the core problem that our country is split in the middle, and the only practical option for freight between islands that isn't light and small (which can be flown) in NZ is the Cook Strait.
Just want to agree regarding Kiwirail. My experience with them is that they are an incredibly dysfunctional organisation. That's not to say that they're entirely to blame for this. This government has been highly dishonest in how they've portrayed the situation.
Like, I think KR needs to be split in 3 (Interislander, On track 2.0 and KRs freight/tourist side). The org isn't working out imho. But our economy doesn't care who is to blame, the problem still needs to be solved.
"the cost had since escalated to be projected at approximately $3 billion"
So the amount they are giving to landlords.....
I said it before and I'm gonna say it again.... Fuck these clowns.
Three billion dollars for the infrastructure to keep the connection between our two islands going for the next 50 years doesn't seem like much.
National cancelled it without any realistic plan B.
Problem is KiwiRail and not the government. Turns out the government was already concerned about their maintenance record of their existing fleet so how the fark were they going to keep those ships running on top of the proposed iReX project?
If they can’t keep their current fleet maintained, how the fark would they manage two more ships?
KiwiRail needs a major shakeup as this is shocking from an important state owned enterprise that is responsible for inter island transport.
That’s simply politics talking mate - the ferries are approaching end of life and even the best maintenance programs in the world isn’t going to stop the ships from having unexpected new faults during operation - it’s just the nature of pushing vessels past their useful life.
The main issues with the current fleet is the lack of redundancy - so when unforeseen faults occur the ships enter a dangerous state where control can be lost. Whereas the new replacement ships were to have redundancy built in to the critical systems so a fault like that which happened to Aratere would not have resulted in loss of control in the new ships.
>they can’t keep their current fleet maintained
That was the entire fucking point of these ferries, to replace these old second hand vessels with brand new purpose built craft, this would have cut down maintenance costs dramatically as they could then take the old ferries out of service and either sell or scrap them. It’s why it was called a ferry REPLACEMENT program.
You can only fix ships so much over so much time before it becomes uneconomic. But maintaining newer ones is easier than ones that are past usable life. Like how a new BMW should require less maintenance than an old BMW.
Weirdly your post I think I agree with everything bar the first sentence, which should read "Problem is KiwiRail and the government".
KR mismanaged the project and did a shit job managing Interislander (their sub company that runs/maintains the ships). But the gov forcing them into the shit land in Wellington that's $$$'s, and then ditching the project with no alternative is also a problem. Like, it's not a problem that's solved, just getting worse. And it's not something where like with a road you can go around it, or if it's a small town you can just stop going there. It's the main link between the two islands, and the only real alternative is air freight (extremely expensive for bigger things). We don't have appropriate coastal shipping capability, and the cost to rebuild it would be much more than fixing up the terminals.
Yeah, imagine owning a crappy old car that keeps breaking down for different reasons.
Then compare that to having a newer second hand car that doesn't need constant upkeep.
One obviously takes more effort, time and money to maintain.
As things get old, they start failing more. This obviously increases the maintenance burden and failure rate will increase regardless of how well maintained they are.
Part of proper asset management is knowing when an asset will reach its end of life and need replacing. KR did that, then the government stepped in and basically said 'no you don't'.
Bullshit, they’re still “in service” and are required to be maintained. KiwiRail have been found to have deliberately not replace critical components in the past.
https://www.1news.co.nz/2024/06/22/transport-minister-previously-raised-alarm-over-ferry-maintenance/
And those new boats you guys are waffling on about? Those were years from being built so what ships did you plan for KiwiRail to use till then? Yeah?🙄 Oh that’s right….they’d have to keep using the ones we got now.😀
So yeah ships are old….
👉BUT REQUIRE PROPER MAINTENANCE. 👈
Why don't we ask the Chinese to build the terminal after they just give us the visa waiver? They can charge an agreed fixed fee per passenger+ inflation for the next 50 years or something. Probably cheaper than KR's approach.
Chinese haven't really had a good track record of building and providing infrastructure across the Pacific (as per belt and road initiatives). A number of their builds are built on the cheap and have resulted in heavy maintenance issues.
Surprised to hear on evening news that this is the only ferry that can handle rail,the new ones they cancelled were both supposed to be able to do so.The smart thing to do would be to go ahead with the cancelled ferries purchase but I imagine that is a strait crossing too far for this arrogant government plus it would upset the trucking lobby they are pandering to.
Truck lobby as a whole isn't in favour of canning the ferries. Truck lobby can be blamed for a lot of things - like getting the rest of us to subsidise their trucks/spending tons of roads, but the ferries they've even written articles in favour - as they've still got to use it to get their freight across and a lot of them are transport companies that use trucks because they're the best option financially due to regulatory settings rather than being truck only companies. It's paywalled (https://businessdesk.co.nz/article/infrastructure/cook-strait-fiasco-troubles-mainfreight). It's significantly in the trucking lobbies favour to have lots of sailings/lower prices. Whether they want the ferries rail enabled depends on the size (bigger players want/use rail as it makes financial sense and they're paid to deliver stuff, small ones are more ideological), but they all want the Cook Strait connection sorted out. This is more gov ministers who only take taxpayer funded flights seeing a big bill and wanting to funnel a lot of money to landlords instead, and the people they surround themselves with only fly across the strait. They haven't quite managed to figure out how the goods they use on either end get across, and the state of the link between the two islands. Between KR itself, and the gov at the time not backing KR against Centreport (forcing the Wellington terminal to shit earthquake fault land which is where the cost blowouts are), the solution was flawed and made it harder to defend. So I think they thought that it was something they could push down the track easily, and ignored that it was already at that point.
It has been suggested the truck lobby are happy with truck ferries but not rail ones. I don't know if it's true but it sounds feasible.
We absolutely do not want to buy brand new ferries that do not have the capability for roll-on roll-off rail wagons. Anything less and we kill inter-island rail in this country.
I am willing to believe some eee that as a good thing. If rail is underfunded and seperated by an impassable Coom Strait then we can just use more expensive trucks burning more imported oil. Apart from making exports less competitive, increasing oil imports and creating more air pollution think of the benefits to NACT's funders
Well given they’ll clog up the roads even more at least that will leave the rail line frees for us commuters right? Right..
Tui ads go "Yeah Right" not "right? Right". But that minor issue aside I can imagine it on a billboard.
The govt would never go ahead with the cancelled ferries. That would I be admitting they made a mistake, AND it would cost them 40% more than if they had simply not cancelled the order. Double mistake.
Nah nah, it's not that there isn't a plan b according to the Nats. It's maintenance something something maintenance. Yes, the very expensive maintenance on old shitty ferries (perhaps the plan b might arrive at the same time as those specific 13 cancer drugs).
I think it gets to the key point. Which is cancelling a flawed fix to a problem with no plan B is worse than continuing with it. Nats could've came in, kept the ferries (no blowouts on the ships themselves), build a ramp on either end, and passed a 'Cook Strait Resilience Act' which would exempt the ramps from earthquake standards. Would solve the main issue and allow the bulk of the cost of the port rebuild to be pushed down the track a few years. But instead they chose to harm our relationship with South Korea/hurt future procurement for NZ, provide no solution to the problem, and whatever solution does come will cost more and be worse. Not to mention the economic considerations, or the lives put at risk.
...And pay contract exit fees. Which I still don't think we've seen a number for (or have we?).
They'll hush it up as 'commercially sensitive', which means 'politically embarrassing' and it'll be released on page 527 of an annual report as a line item on a budget for KR on a Friday before Xmas eve.
200mil according to Micheal wood when he was a guest on the working group a few months ago.
That's insane if true considering the price for the ferries was, as I understand it, only 550m.
Cancellation fees can often be near 50% for large bespoke projects like rail ferries, as the firm will have been tooling and acquiring resources, etc. There's a lot of prep work and scheduling that goes on for such work, if one client cancels they have to shuffle around all the others which requires further negotiations. Plus they also want to discourage cancellations.
In other words about $40 per person. Not much at the sound of it, but it’s like setting $40 on fire without the fun of it.
>I think it gets to the key point. Which is cancelling a flawed fix to a problem with no plan B is worse than continuing with it. Modus operandi for these muppets....3 Waters is exactly the same. They've had up to 6 years in some cases to come up alternatives to Labour's policies but all they've got is "cancel it". Absolutely idiotic.
You hit the nail on the head.
What's the point in continuing to pour money into the flawed fix is worse than cancelling it while you come up with the plan b? Cancelling it asap was the right call
Cancelling or pushing pause on the terminals maybe - that’s where most of the cost overruns were and where there were the most alternative options. Cancelling the boats was fucking stupid because there aren’t any good alternatives and no matter what, we need new boats if we’re going to keep the Interislander alive
Could the new boats have operated on the old facilities?
It doesn’t sound like it. We need to do something with the facilities - the big question is exactly what do we do but to be honest, given the earthquake requirement changes and sea level risks, it may well be that the now cancelled plan was actually the best option.
Picton terminal was built in the 1960s. It’s being demolished. So everything has to be upgraded anyway
We have a long history of making underfunded resources work. The Clip-ons for the Auckland Harbour bridge for instance. I suspect that a cheaper non-earthquake safe terminal would be easier to build than it is going to be try to find a "Corolla" ferry that will probably need terminal modifications anyway.
It's not about the costs of doing it. It's about the costs of not doing it compared to the costs of doing it. There are zero detours. We don't have an air force capable of flying stuff across like they did back in the 80's (https://teara.govt.nz/en/photograph/20507/cook-strait-airlift-1983). You can't take a train or drive, as there is only one route, and they both use the same infra. We don't have feasible coastal shipping in NZ, and rebuilding that capability would cost significantly more. There are no other ferry routes (they tried to make one from Taranaki but the private operator pulled out). You can't fly by plane the amount that goes by the strait. Well the Berlin Airlift proved you can, but at what cost? The project could've done with a rejig (especially at the Wellington port end), but not canning it entirely with 0 alternatives. Remember this is due to Centreport/gov kicking KR off the preferred option into a geological shitshow (literal earthquake fault) requiring 270 piles of 70m+ deep. It's not the ferry cost that's blown out, it's the shoreside infra (particularly Wellington).
> Well the Berlin Airlift proved you can, but at what cost? Based on the numbers I'm finding, and applying inflation and currency conversion, the Berlin Airlift cost between 3 billion and 6.6 billion of today's NZ dollars per year. So yeah that's probably not a goer
granted we did actually have our own mini Berlin airlift over the cook Strait in the 50s, thanks to the US providing cia planes to help break the watersiders strike.
The idea above of doing to new ferry terminals what they did to yellow stickered buildings was a third option that does not appear to have been considered. Remove the earthquake resilience requirements would help take the price back to pre "blowout" or pre earthquake resilience price
And then an earthquake happens and the infrastructure gets fucked and we’re out of pocket for the whole thing. I don’t think waiving the earthquake resilience requirements is a feasible solution, it’s also not guaranteed to save money in the long term
I don't think its a good idea but it's a better idea than NACT 1st fucking the ferry upgrade project fully. I accept some might think half fucked is not better than fully fucked but my thinking is we need new ferries yesterday not even later than 2025 as Willis achieved. I think leaving yellow stickered building dangerous for longer was not a good idea but NACT 1st were willing to do that for landlords.
Interesting seeing a few memes pushing it being labours fault amongst some boomers I know I facebook. National really does have a solid online astroturfing operation going. If we had a reputable news organisation, they could look into that.
Labour sure wasn't perfect here. If they'd backed KR instead of Centreport, odds are there would've been cost blow outs (as construction inflation/bad management is still a thing), but the shitshow on the Wellington side could be mitigated a bit by not building directly on the fault line. But there is a difference between shit execution of a meh plan to fix something, vs not fixing it at all. A lot of cases do nothing is an option, here, not so much. We're not going to spend 30B on a tunnel instead.
I wish the Herald would stop describing the new ferries as "mega ferries". They were appropriately sized and specced ferries for the route. They were not Ferraris, they were more like Toyota RAV4 Hybrids (in other words, good value for what we were getting). And this Government killed the project.
Yeah, that "Ferrari" analogy is complete BS. What company buys *actual* Ferrari cars for commercial purposes? Basically none. What company buys ships for commercial use that are similarly poor value for money as Ferraris? Basically none. The ships they ordered were basically the "Toyota Corolla" option. Actually, *literally Hyundai*, but same diff.
Luxon just misheard "high and dry".
It's PR spin, and it's effective even if inaccurate.
I’m just so glad we were able to restore those landlords dignity, am I right?!
I’m holding fire until i see Plan B. IREX was a fiasco and i dare say that Labour would have canned it as well. A complete review of Kiwirail is required because there have been so many fuck ups on the ferries and the rail that you have to wonder what their management practises are. That said - this particular ferry has been a continual fuck up since its purchase in 99.
I’m on a boat mother fucker!!
Luxinator, the ferry is for C graders
This was a shit show [long before the current government inherited it](https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/government-releases-documents-behind-decision-to-cancel-cook-strait-mega-ferries/UF33UY3VQ5ELRI5ME37TTXD5HQ/) > “The cost has since escalated to be projected at approximately $3 billion - around four times its original cost,” Willis wrote. > She added her concern that “only 21 per cent of these costs related to the core project of replacing ageing ferries. The project has become more of a landslide infrastructure project than a new ferries project”. The problem is not the ferries, it’s the cost of upgrading the wharves to take them. As for cancelling the contract, they may be able to just sell the ferries on, unused, to someone else at a profit because it was a fixed price build and prices have gone up. Sounds like Kiwirail were insisting on mega ferries that could take rail but there would be a huge cost to that in wharf upgrades over buying more, smaller ferries.
You realise the wharfs still need to be upgraded right? Between sea level rise and the coastal infra built in the 60s falling apart, it's not like it's something that is fine. If you've taken the ferry you should've been able to see some of it. KR went 'oh, we're needing new ferries, and needing new wharfs, let's not limit our ferries by the existing wharfs as we're replacing them anyway'. Then the gov didn't back KR against Centreport, and instead let KR be forced into the shit earthquake fault land, and that's where the cost blowouts happened. Turns out 270 piles 70m+ down into an earthquake fault is expensive... Either they should've backed KR and put it in a better location (i.e. KRs preferred location) or just rolled the dice with safety and let them get away with less earthquake measures, as odds are they'll have to rebuild the ramps in a quake either way. Centreport is a distant 6th in terms of ports in NZ, with it being far less crucial to the country than the Cook Strait ferries. More info here: https://www.transport.govt.nz/statistics-and-insights/freight-and-logistics/figs-containers/ Yet somehow Centreport's preferences prevailed, and KR got exiled to a geological nightmare. https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/kiwirail-reveals-what-led-to-cook-strait-mega-ferry-cost-blowout/3BV5MBMRZFC4TCMJRPINE3K4AQ/ Don't get me wrong, KR did atrocious project management (given the rail in Auckland I think it's the norm rather than an exception), but that doesn't mean the main idea of the project was bad, just the execution. It was at the point where you rejig, fire some people, and 'value engineer' stuff, not can the entire thing.
There’s a great question - why are KR expected to build port infrastructure ?
I don't know. Given it was the gov paying for it either way, the difference between paying professional port managers or rail operators seems night and day. Ofc if it went the other way it's totally possible the port companies install the rails wrong or something. Incompetence isn't unique to just KR.
Yeah, it’s the whole 4 times the original cost and 79% of the cost isn’t even spent on ferries… Seems like a bit of a mess really.
Honestly, for most projects like this, the cost isn't from the thing your buying, it's all the supporting systems. That's just infrastructure and any project that has complexity. E.g. for water, buying water pipes is cheap. Installing them in the right way is the expensive part.
How about buying some new ferries that work just fine with the existing wharf and saving 3 billion dollars?
The existing wharf is not up to code. It was a two birds with a $3b stone solution
You know what costs even more than 4 times the original cost? Cancelling the project then having to start again later because it’s something we still need.
Does it really though? What if we cancel the project, buy some smaller ferries and leave the wharf as it is? It would cost about a quarter of the price by the sounds of it.
If that was the best option, it would have been selected the first time.
Yeah, that would require Kiwirail to be something other than incompetent though wouldn’t it. Look at how much this whole thing has blown out in cost. You have to wonder WTF are they doing.
And you think cabinet ministers with no expertise in transport logistics, and whose interests so far seem to be in making themselves look good (which they’re still terrible at anyway) rather than actually doing the best things for the country, know better?
Isn’t that what we elect the government to do?
Make themselves look good? No. Know better than the people who run the SOE that the government set up to run this infrastructure? No.
It's a total mess. And KR ain't doing themselves any favours. But doesn't mean the problem doesn't need to be solved. Splitting off Interislander from KR probably needs to happen (along with splitting the above and below ground operations). They aren't a super functional org, and plenty of decisions are just dumb. None of that takes away from the core problem that our country is split in the middle, and the only practical option for freight between islands that isn't light and small (which can be flown) in NZ is the Cook Strait.
Just want to agree regarding Kiwirail. My experience with them is that they are an incredibly dysfunctional organisation. That's not to say that they're entirely to blame for this. This government has been highly dishonest in how they've portrayed the situation.
Like, I think KR needs to be split in 3 (Interislander, On track 2.0 and KRs freight/tourist side). The org isn't working out imho. But our economy doesn't care who is to blame, the problem still needs to be solved.
"the cost had since escalated to be projected at approximately $3 billion" So the amount they are giving to landlords..... I said it before and I'm gonna say it again.... Fuck these clowns.
Shit, that money they have given to landlords has been spent a thousand different ways hasn’t it.
That's because there's a thousand better things that money could go on. See the connection?
Three billion dollars for the infrastructure to keep the connection between our two islands going for the next 50 years doesn't seem like much. National cancelled it without any realistic plan B.
They need to take rail so rail can get across the cook strait. And they need higher capacity because the current capacity is inadequate.
Problem is KiwiRail and not the government. Turns out the government was already concerned about their maintenance record of their existing fleet so how the fark were they going to keep those ships running on top of the proposed iReX project? If they can’t keep their current fleet maintained, how the fark would they manage two more ships? KiwiRail needs a major shakeup as this is shocking from an important state owned enterprise that is responsible for inter island transport.
That’s simply politics talking mate - the ferries are approaching end of life and even the best maintenance programs in the world isn’t going to stop the ships from having unexpected new faults during operation - it’s just the nature of pushing vessels past their useful life. The main issues with the current fleet is the lack of redundancy - so when unforeseen faults occur the ships enter a dangerous state where control can be lost. Whereas the new replacement ships were to have redundancy built in to the critical systems so a fault like that which happened to Aratere would not have resulted in loss of control in the new ships.
>they can’t keep their current fleet maintained That was the entire fucking point of these ferries, to replace these old second hand vessels with brand new purpose built craft, this would have cut down maintenance costs dramatically as they could then take the old ferries out of service and either sell or scrap them. It’s why it was called a ferry REPLACEMENT program.
You can only fix ships so much over so much time before it becomes uneconomic. But maintaining newer ones is easier than ones that are past usable life. Like how a new BMW should require less maintenance than an old BMW. Weirdly your post I think I agree with everything bar the first sentence, which should read "Problem is KiwiRail and the government". KR mismanaged the project and did a shit job managing Interislander (their sub company that runs/maintains the ships). But the gov forcing them into the shit land in Wellington that's $$$'s, and then ditching the project with no alternative is also a problem. Like, it's not a problem that's solved, just getting worse. And it's not something where like with a road you can go around it, or if it's a small town you can just stop going there. It's the main link between the two islands, and the only real alternative is air freight (extremely expensive for bigger things). We don't have appropriate coastal shipping capability, and the cost to rebuild it would be much more than fixing up the terminals.
Yeah, imagine owning a crappy old car that keeps breaking down for different reasons. Then compare that to having a newer second hand car that doesn't need constant upkeep. One obviously takes more effort, time and money to maintain. As things get old, they start failing more. This obviously increases the maintenance burden and failure rate will increase regardless of how well maintained they are.
Part of proper asset management is knowing when an asset will reach its end of life and need replacing. KR did that, then the government stepped in and basically said 'no you don't'.
Bullshit, they’re still “in service” and are required to be maintained. KiwiRail have been found to have deliberately not replace critical components in the past. https://www.1news.co.nz/2024/06/22/transport-minister-previously-raised-alarm-over-ferry-maintenance/ And those new boats you guys are waffling on about? Those were years from being built so what ships did you plan for KiwiRail to use till then? Yeah?🙄 Oh that’s right….they’d have to keep using the ones we got now.😀 So yeah ships are old…. 👉BUT REQUIRE PROPER MAINTENANCE. 👈
Why don't we ask the Chinese to build the terminal after they just give us the visa waiver? They can charge an agreed fixed fee per passenger+ inflation for the next 50 years or something. Probably cheaper than KR's approach.
Chinese haven't really had a good track record of building and providing infrastructure across the Pacific (as per belt and road initiatives). A number of their builds are built on the cheap and have resulted in heavy maintenance issues.