Recent research has shown the wide-ranging benefits of the rail industry in New Zealand.
The Australasian Railway Association (ARA) commissioned a report titled The Benefit of Rail to New Zealand to uncover the benefits the industry has to the country.
The report states the rail industry generates $3.3 billion for the New Zealand economy each year, including almost one billion towards Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and $2.3 billion in environmental, safety, health and reduced road congestion benefits.
The report also showed that the rail industry provides 1,010 full-time equivalent jobs annually in other sectors such as construction and wholesale and retail trade, on top of 5,500 jobs in rail.
Rail saves travellers 8.8 million and 10.3 million hours of driving annually in Auckland and Wellington respectively, and results in eight less road fatalities each year.
This results from 23 million passenger journeys and 17 million tonnes of freight being moved by rail each year.
The report details the considerable benefits to the New Zealand economy that rail delivers including:
$1.53 billion – reduced travel time and road congestion
$291 million – less adverse health effects
$267 million – lower fuel and maintenance costs
$161 million – less crashes, deaths, and serious injuries
$36 million – less domestic greenhouse gas emissions
An interesting discovery was the $291 million in benefits to the health of New Zealanders which takes into account the implications of tyre, brake, and engine exhaust on disease and mortality. The cost of these emissions for New Zealand implies more than $291 million per year in hospital visits, reduced lung development in children, increased medication use, as well as reduced life expectancy and death.
ARA Chief Executive Officer Caroline Wilkie said the report clearly demonstrates the critical and growing role rail plays in moving the New Zealand economy forward.
“Rail is a vital part of New Zealand’s efficient and sustainable transport network and provides billions of dollars in economic benefit across several sectors every year,” Wilkie said.
“The New Zealand rail industry delivers considerable value for money – creating thousands of new jobs and supporting the construction, wholesale and retail trade, dairy and coal export industries – and is essential to a vibrant economy.”
The report noted that the savings provided by rail are a conservative estimate given the analysis does not consider land value uplift, tourism, relative infrastructure costs, resilience, or long-term supply chain performance. It forecasts the total $3.3 billion of economic benefits to grow over time, in response to increases in urban populations, public transit movements, and freight volumes post-pandemic.
Without rail, New Zealand would expect a $97 million reduction in net exports, impacting the country’s performance as an “export powerhouse”, the report found.
It details the significant benefits provided to rail reliant sectors, with rail stimulating the creation of 429 jobs in construction, for example, and generating $399 million in GDP each year for wholesale and retail trade.
The study estimates the total, net public benefit of rail by modelling road network operations in the absence of any rail transport.
Rail also reduces fossil fuel consumption by almost 150 million litres per year, taking 2,000 fuel tankers off the road and saving $195 million.
KiwiRail also released findings that businesses and freight companies choosing to put their goods on rail saved nearly 230,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in the past financial year in New Zealand.
The latest data shows that goods carried on rail reduced transport CO2 emissions by 229,434 tonnes (based on national average emissions factors), compared with the emissions that would have been created carrying those products by trucks.
Rail also avoided one million heavy truck trips, easing road congestion, reducing road maintenance costs and saving 84.7 million litres of fuel.
KiwiRail chief customer and growth officer Adele Wilson said the latest figures highlight the value of rail to New Zealand.
“Rail is a key part of an integrated national freight transport system,” she said.
“It’s not about rail versus road but the two modes working seamlessly together. One freight train can carry the same amount of freight as 40 trucks – it’s an efficient way to move large quantities of goods over long distances. In a rail context, road plays an essential role in moving freight to and from the rail head.
“As the data shows, rail has a clear role in helping reduce our overall transport emissions and helping New Zealand meet its emission reduction targets.”
In the past year KiwiRail has:
carried beer for Mainfreight on behalf of Matakana’s Sawmill Brewery. Moving their freight to the South Island by rail reduces Sawmill’s transport emissions on the key freight route between Auckland and Christchurch by 60 per cent.
worked with Coca-Cola Europacific Partners New Zealand to build a new rail siding at its Mt Wellington (Auckland) factory, which will significantly increase rail capacity for volumes to Palmerston North.
connected rail to Tainui Group Holdings’ Ruakura Inland Port, which is seeing thousands of containers moved for Nexus Logistics on behalf of a major retailer.
worked with the Wareing Group and Ashburton District Council to connect the new Fairfield Freight Hub near Ashburton. This is a key rail-road hub for Canterbury, enabling rail capacity from the hub to Lyttelton Port to grow from 6,000 to 20,000 containers a year.
Wilson said the message is that the more industry chooses rail, the greater the environmental benefits.
“Successive governments have made significant investments in lifting the standard of the national rail network and KiwiRail is in the process of replacing our ageing locomotives with new low-emission diesel locos,” she said.
Wilson said as a part of KiwiRail’s long-term network improvement program the organisation is working hard to be able to provide better service to freight customers and logistics companies needing sustainable, urgent freight transport solutions.
“These investments will not only reduce rail emissions further but provide the improved reliability that will give logistics companies and other businesses the confidence to make greater use of rail,” she said.
“The general economic downturn is affecting all sectors of the freight market, but we continue looking for opportunities to work with logistics companies and other customers to grow rail volumes, for the benefit of New Zealand.”
The post Rail industry delivers for the New Zealand economy appeared first on Rail Express.
