Napier MP Katie Nimon is now trying to prevent the rebuilding of the Napier to Wairoa railway. Like most politicians of the right, she fails to see that all of the rail and roadways were severely damaged in the region, mostly because of too much road traffic and not enough rail traffic.
Nimon says there is just one log train, but she needs to understand how many log trucks that is the equivalent of and what the cut in CO2 emissions are when using the train. She also needs to talk to the loggers who use the service and see what they think.
Closing rail lines and building more roads is really 1980s thinking. The world has literally moved on and those who ignore that will be left in the dust — or smoke or water or mud — in the not-too-distant future.
Niall Robertson
National coordinator of The Rail Advocacy Collective (TRAC)
