Considering the mass of experts assembled here to review with expert views on the Climate commissions final report to
government it was another disappointment that omitted any discussion about the environmental and economic benefits of
rail freight.
CEAC has boldly discussed this in great detail over the last four years and still rail is dropped as the leading mode to reduce climate emissions over road freight.
Again we call on this Government to move back to Rail rather than expanding even more road freight as time is short.
We travelled back to Gisborne yesterday from Napier on Highway 2 and the road was jammed full of truck freight (mainly
logs) while the rail line lays idle to Napier, and in Gisborne’s case their rail line was been cut off completely from
any freight traffic.
Kiwi rail is in need of a change of management as it has shown to be negligent at running a rail service.
As we said before’ We see the best way is to use rail freight, to reduce road transport of freight around this county that has trebled since 21 years ago according to the statistics from truck movements we have reviewed.
The benefits are to reduce carbon emissions by carrying half the freight by rail and the reminder by road, as this will
reduce the truck emissions and overuse of energy use for those road repairs going on continuously for over use of heavy
truck use of our ‘light–duty’ single laned regional roads that are always in poor repair.
Many other countries are now improving their rail services and our time has come, to provide a balance to transport
services around NZ provinces, and reduce transport carbon emissions to play our part to reduce climate change and
disaster facing our future generations.