KEY POINTS:
Ports of Auckland is setting up a working party to consider connecting the Onehunga waterfront to the region's expanding rail network, in response to calls to lighten freight loads on local streets.
Government rail agency Ontrack intends starting work in October on a $10 million restoration of the decaying Onehunga branch line, now that the Government has approved plans to reopen it for half-hourly passenger services from 2009.
The Auckland Regional Transport Authority expects a new station and extra trains - to carry more than 500,000 passengers a year - to cost another $3 million to $5 million.
Coastal shipping company Pacifica and the Auckland Regional Council are meanwhile calling for the line to be reopened as far as the Onehunga wharf, to carry freight as well as passengers.
The company delivers about 200 shipping containers a week to Onehunga and collects about 250 for return trips to Nelson and other South Island ports.
It sends between 110 and 120 by road from Onehunga to Auckland's main port for export, under a new handling contract from international cargo giant Maersk, which no longer calls at Nelson.
Pacifica chief executive Rod Grout says sending these across Auckland by rail instead of road would mean at least 100 fewer truck trips a week, meeting social and environmental objectives of the Government's national transport strategy.
Freight trains would not interfere with passenger services as they would run at night.
Although funding for a waterfront rail connection would present challenges, given that the connection would be on land owned by the port company, Mr Grout said no more than $500,000 should be needed.
No rail tracks are left on the wharf itself, but the disused branch line runs to within a few metres of a tunnel under the old Mangere bridge, through which freight trains ran until 1989.
Ontrack says it has been funded to rehabilitate the entire 3.5km Onehunga line from Penrose to the wharf, not just to a railway station site subject to confidential property negotiations involving the regional transport authority.
But spokeswoman Jenni Austin said that while Ontrack welcomed initiatives aimed at removing freight from roads, running a service from the waterfront would be for rail operator Toll NZ to determine.
Toll spokeswoman Sue Foley said her company was similarly keen on taking trucks off Auckland roads, but had yet to assess the feasibility of a freight operation from Onehunga.
Although the port company has been concentrating its rail-freight efforts on a new inland "port" it has developed at Wiri for around $19 million, and is waiting for Government approval of a funding request for around $7 million for a rail siding and associated infrastructure there, that does not mean it lacks enthusiasm for other projects.
Chief executive-designate Jens Madsen told the Herald that a company working-party was being set up to consult stakeholders and to consider a business case for reopening Onehunga to freight.
"Whenever there is a requirement, we will look at it - we will see what is required there for the long term."
An Auckland Regional Council report also points to interest from Port of Taranaki in promoting coastal shipping "with the Onehunga Port as potentially a key component".
