“It’s not going to be quick, I mean they’re not going to arrive tomorrow, this is a long-term investment,” he said.
“We’ve got to get in the queue.”
Callister wanted to see improvements to passenger rail in other parts of the country too.
“The upper North Island - that area is really ripe for revival of passenger rail and then we’ve got even bigger ideas about a night train between Auckland and Wellington, and people are talking about reviving trains in the South Island.”
Mayor welcomes trains but wants progress on promised expressway
Horowhenua District Mayor Bernie Wanden said while the new trains were welcome, the region also needed its long-awaited expressway.
He said locals were eager to see work on the Ōtaki to North Levin expressway project start in earnest.
“We still haven’t got any definitive start to that project, we’re still waiting for confirmation of the funding.”
Wanden said while some work on consents and property purchases had begun, the project had not yet been given complete sign-off.
He said it had been over 10 years since the expressway was proposed and without it Horowhenua roads remained unsafe.
“There’s not going to be a Road to Zero positive result with that road being like it is,” he said.
“The volume of traffic that’s on that piece of road now is growing all the time.”
Wanden said there were still sections of the State Highway 1 network in the region where no alternate route was available in the event of an accident.
