NEW ZEALAND’s coalition government has pulled the plug on two rail projects, raising concerns about whether other federally-financed rail schemes might also be cancelled.
Transport minister, Mr Simeon Brown, announced the cancellation of Auckland’s planned $NZ 15bn ($US 9.24bn) light rail project on January 14. So far $NZ 228m has been spent on the planned 24km line that would have connected central Auckland with Māngere and Auckland airport. Services running every five minutes were forecast to remove 14,500 vehicles from the roads each year.
But after a new government came to power last year it issued a stop work notice and has now agreed to scrap the project altogether. “After six years… not a single metre of track has been delivered and congestion has only worsened in the city,” Brown says. No alternative has so far been mooted.
The scrapping of the Auckland light rail scheme comes shortly after the government declined to fund the Inter Island Resilient Connection (iRex) ferry project, that would have replaced existing diesel-powered craft with two new hybrid diesel-electric train ferries.
The government said that costs had quadrupled to around $NZ 3bn since 2018 and that it remained committed to a resilient connection between New Zealand’s North and South Islands, although it has not yet specified how this will be achieved.
“We cannot proceed without further government funding. We respect the government’s role as shareholder and funder to make this decision,” says Mr David McLean, chair of national operator KiwiRail.
“The board will now oversee the wind-down of the project and review our plans for the Cook Strait connection. … An alternative suitable long-term solution could take years to develop.”
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