4 October 2006
Ontrack, Toll on track for collision
Media reports that Toll may be considering shutting down large chunks of the North Island rail network should be
motivating all the parties involved to sort out a proper balance of user charges across road and rail, Green Party MP
Sue Kedgley says.
" The immediate solution for the current destructive dispute between Toll and Ontrack would be for the parties to arrive
at a lower access charge regime for Toll that was conditional on Toll growing rail volumes, and with the Government
making up the shortfall that Ontrack would face."
"Such a solution would be consistent with the national interest in increasing rail's role in our overall transport
strategy, as both a freight and passenger carrier. This makes good economic and environmental sense, given the threat
posed by climate change. It would also serve to redress the imbalance between rail charges and road user charges
identified by the Government's own Surface Costs and Charges Study in 2002..
"The amounts involved are peanuts to Government. Yet, as he was with Wellington's trolley buses, Michael Cullen seems
obsessive about Government inputs into rail or public transport, whenever there is a private operator involved.
"Dr Cullen seems to have no such qualms however, about pouring billion-plus amounts into roads, despite the benefits
that accrue to truck operators and other private firms from that investment
"The future of the main truck line, and the Napier Gisborne freight line, are too important to the regions and to the
nation to be used as cannon fodder in these kind of conflicts. It is time the parties sat down and worked out the best
balance between road and rail, and then worked out the sort of access charges and appropriate fee levels to achieve
those goals."
ENDS