Editorial: Railway could be our future

Some of the congestion the Napier Gisborne Rail Establishment Group hopes will end if the Government and/or KiwiRail opens the line.

Someone famous once said all nostalgia is denial.

I forget who it was, but the theory gains traction whenever I walk through my primary school, drive past an old flat or thumb through a photo album.

It manifests itself intensely when I visit my old university hostel and look up at a room on the third floor I called mi casa for a year as an 18-year-old.

I'm thinking whoever coined the above phrase meant nostalgia is denial of the present and a longing for the past. Perhaps I'm denying my age and pining for the halcyon days of youth.

I also think of the notion whenever the Napier-Gisborne rail derailment makes headlines.

Sometimes it's hard to discern between nostalgia and acceptance.

Consider the logging truck crashes on Monday, including a fatal crash on State Highway 29, and the rolling of a logging truck trailer on Maraekakaho Rd. Of course, two trucks aren't a deal breaker. But it's nice to think we could see this huge tonnage run on rail rather than road.

The Government has said the matter is unequivocally out of the question, the Napier Gisborne Rail Establishment Group (NGRG) say the Government the Ministry of Transport has simply failed to understand its proposal.

Leaving aside any nuance allegedly lost on the ministry, it's clear the state doesn't want a bar of it, however it's pitched.

This can only be based on the grounds that it's not profitable.

And fair enough.

But why pick on this stretch? It's hard to believe any other stretch of parallel line in this country is enjoying a roaring trade.

But far be it from me to present a business case to Mr Brownlee. That's NGRG's brief to do, sans nostalgia.