26th June 2019.

Tony Robinson covered the Gisborne loss of rail issue very well is his 22nd June 2019 Gisborne herald article; - “Rail is essential to our region”

QUOTE: “The BERL report promises to be the most comprehensive analysis of the rail transport option conducted since the line closed. If the BERL feasibility report is favourable then the council must support it. Security of transport is essential to ensure our region’s economic growth.

The BERL report is due later in the year, most likely after the local body elections. The voting public of Tairawhiti have the right to know beforehand where council candidates stand on this critical issue. I support the reopening of the rail line. If BERL’s report concludes it is viable and I am elected to council, I will do everything I can to achieve the reopening of the Gisborne rail line.”

http://gisborneherald.co.nz/opinion/4154147-135/rail-is-essential-to-our-region

We look forward to his election to Gisborne District Council.

In a Gisborne Herald press rail poll conducted last week showed 85% of those polled wanted rail services for freight and passenger services returned to Gisborne, and that is significant.

We are confident the new BERL 'Gisborne rail viability study' being produced this year in 2019 will support the re-opening of the Gisborne rail service again.

Why do we believe this?

Our past history will now reveal why?

The new BERL report will "not be a whitewash" as our past Gisborne Councillor Manu Caddie called the 2014 MBIE/NZTA study.

As this time the new 2019 'BERL Gisborne rail viability study' will finally include the vitally essential rail evidence from the Government's own (Principal Advisor of all transport modes) called the 'Ministry of Transport' with many rail viability reports contained as their references inside the BERL report that were in 2014 by MBIE/NZTA factually & deliberately omitted from the last 2014 'botched whitewashed cherry picked 'National Party' Gisborne rail report that MBIE/NZTA produced.

URGENT; Government needs to properly commit more funding of our ‘Ministry of Transport’ so they can adequately embark on ‘new rail studies’ for our future security now also.

In 2014 that botched report was a savage blow then against the restoration of our Gisborne rail.

Fact.

NZTA is not "the transport agency"

NZTA is only a "road controlling agency" referred to as an (RCA) and NZTA should never again be used as a "rail advisory agency" - as it only deals with promoting new regional roads for trucks and definitely not for rail freight, as it regards roading as its only focus' so it was a mistake to use NZTA for an 'advisor' for rail in the first place.. .

This was a 'phoney report' full of omissions of evidence that would have supported rail, and was designed only to silence the Mayors of HB/Gisborne during their efforts to collectively go directly to Parliament in 2013 with a Public Gisborne petition signed by 10480 community members requesting Government to repair the Gisborne rail service.

The last National Government in 2014 was caught off guard with the over welling public show of support for the rail service that that they 'hastily cobbled together this phoney' "Gisborne Economic viability study" that was hollowed out with a thinly veiled view that it may support the need to restore their rail service but with not enough evidence to save the rail then, and we got stymied after the Mayors deputation to Wellington to meet with the then Minister of transport Steven Joyce and his sidekick Gerry Brownlee at their office.

The Mayors of HB and Gisborne were in fact given a big rat to shallow on that very day, and were given nothing but false promises to produce a "Gisborne rail viability study" instead of a real promise to reopen the rail line in 2014.

Never again should we ever trust the National Government when it comes to supporting Gisborne or HB over protecting our rights to have a rail service to our eastern provinces as it seems that ‘National are diametrically opposed to having a well-balanced rail service to our remote regions in every sense of those words’.

ends

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