Dairy and coal crucial to the future of West Coast rail

The vulnerable State Highway 6 just south of Franz Josef, with an NZ Transport Agency stopbank to the right to stop the adjoining Waiho River. Photo / Brendon McMahon

The importance of “trunk infrastructure” to the West Coast economy has been highlighted to the Te Tai o Poutini Plan commissioners.

Principal planner Lois Easton, in her opening statement on day one of hearings, said the region was particularly reliant and vulnerable due to one main road along the 650km long region as well as a single rail connection to the east coast.

While that trunk infrastructure was huge in comparison to the region’s 32,000-odd people, those transport links were vital to drive the economy.

At the same time, the links were more than just for the local population with, for instance, State Highway 6 enabling 450,000 visitors into South Westland and Glacier Country annually, pre-Covid.

Easton said the reality of the physical geography, combined with natural elements such as weather and the presence of the Alpine Fault, meant many West Coasters were “fearful” of losing viable industry due to any disruption to its life-lines.

In particular, the region’s dairy industry and the export of prime steel-making coal were based on the economy of bulk transport availability via the Midland Line and the Otira Tunnel.

Conversely, the rail link was only still there because of those industries.

“If they aren’t there it will be lost.”

Easton said the “long and skinny” region with the high natural hazard of the Main Divide on one side and a long vulnerable coast on the other meant it was “very reliant” on the security of those trunk assets.

They were so important yet had “very little resilience”.

Renewal work underway on the Hokitika Branch Railway in winter 2022. The line's main customer Westland Milk Products is very reliant on the line and its feeder value to the Port of Lyttelton for export West Coast dairy products. Photo / Brendon McMahon

This, combined with the constraints of topography and the vagaries of prices in the international export market, made that vulnerability very present.

At the same time, the main state highway network in the region traversed three national parks, with the region subject to significant weather affecting critical infrastructure.

- Public Interest Journalism funded through NZ on Air