Dialogue: Log-jam looms unless rail reclaimed by state

Forestry Minister Jim Sutton is excited about the prospect of a 60 per cent growth in forestry in the next three years. But has he thought about what that means on the ground - specifically on the roads?

Whangarei is just one place Mr Sutton will be able to go to see the effects of the forestry boom he's been hailing.

There is expected to be an almost threefold increase in logging in Northland in the next three years. Twenty-eight million extra tonnes of logs will come out of the province in the next decade.

That means 700 more logging trucks a day through Northland's rural communities to the new Whangarei port.

That is, unless a new rail line extension is built to connect Whangarei's port to the main rail network.

That seems unlikely. At the time when New Zealand needs significant investment in rail to meet projected industry demands, Tranz Rail is going in the opposite direction. Tranz Rail wants to close lines that aren't making enough money and sell its passenger services. It certainly doesn't want to start building new track.

Maintaining the track it already has is an increasing burden, with maintenance backlogs in some places. There is no longer a centralised train control system in place for all lines.

The Green Party's new rail plan, announced this week, would help Northland and a number of other regions by negotiating to bring the national rail track back into public ownership.

A new state-owned enterprise, a partnership between central and local government, would be set up to own the physical components of the rail network - track, land lease, bridges, tunnels, signalling, communications and some buildings.

So why should Tranz Rail agree to this? Logic suggests it would benefit from handing over the track at no or low cost in exchange for shedding the costs of track maintenance and for a guaranteed access agreement - say an exclusive right to run its freight services on the lines.

The state-owned enterprise should be debt free. Its job would be to maintain the track and cover its costs, not to make a profit.

We invest billion of dollars in roads and recover just the direct costs from road users, without any return on capital. Rail should be the same. The real return is in the economic benefit to the nation.

The right to run trains on the track would be the subject of access agreements. These could be with freight companies (Tranz Rail, for example), private passenger companies or private-public joint ventures. Access agreements would be bid for competitively where demand exceeded space.

The Government would not be involved in running rail services. The rail extension to the port of Whangarei could be built as a joint venture with the port and forestry interests, giving them guaranteed access.

As far as Auckland goes, I agree with Auckland local bodies that they need to control the local track network so they are able to develop passenger services. But the $112 million Tranz Rail wanted would have drained Auckland's coffers and set an unrealistic price for the rest of the network. Fragmenting ownership bit by bit will not get the best from the asset.

Our plan would give Aucklanders part ownership of the whole track and management rights within their region. Infrastructure Auckland would then have more money to put into track improvements, such as double-tracking the western suburban line, new signalling equipment and new services.

Our scheme would build on the good work the Auckland Regional Council and the territorial authorities have done towards getting rail into public hands - but Auckland would benefit from being part of a long-term, integrated, national solution.

At present we have a rail system in the hands of an overseas monopoly which wants to get out of passenger services in Auckland and Wellington and close down freight lines in areas about to need rail for an export boom.

A question mark hangs over Rotorua, and the Napier-Gisborne track has been earmarked to close as uneconomic. But like Northland, Napier-Gisborne is about to see a huge logging increase - about 265 per cent, according to the Government. That would mean about 350 logging truck trips daily if road was used instead of rail.

The cost of roading would rise significantly with all the extra heavy traffic. The roads would be even more dangerous, and they're dangerous enough already.

In 1999 trucks were involved in almost 20 per cent of all road fatalities. ACC employee premium levels, a good indicator of safety and accident levels, have those in road freight transport paying $3.06 and those in rail $1.62.

We would also find it much harder to meet our commitments under the Kyoto Protocol. Rail is five times more energy-efficient than trucks a tonne-kilometre. Turning to trucks means five times as much greenhouse gas.

Although road-users and rail-users sometimes seem to be set up, particularly by road lobby groups, as natural enemies caught in a funding contest, rail and road need each other. Road-users benefit when freight goes by rail - think of being stuck behind all those logging trucks in Northland - and those people sitting in passenger trains are not adding their cars to the road traffic jam.

But road-users don't face anything like the full costs of the roads. They don't pay a return on capital and they don't pay for the environmental damage they cause. It's only fair - and efficient - that rail should be funded on the same basis.

Therefore, under the Green scheme, Transfund, the Government organisation which funds our roads, would pay the new state-owned enterprise an equalisation payment.

With a forestry boom forecast and tourism already booming, New Zealand needs rail. And we need to move right now to make sure that the infrastructure is kept whole and not sold off in bits.

With the log-jam looming, the Green Party's proposal provides a way in which the Government can regain ownership and control of a critical piece of New Zealand's infrastructure at a reasonable cost - in the nick of time.

* Jeanette Fitzsimons is co-leader of the Green Party.