Aotearoa / New Zealand

I really like rail, and agree that it has a lot of benefits; but road and rail isolation due to land movement, bridge damage etc from natural disasters is likely to be increasingly common and expensive to recover from. Ports can also get damaged, but the sea paths between are obviously difficult to close and getting a port serviceable in most disasters is likely to be easier too.

Even despite that I have a strong preference for re-opening a lot of the under utilised rail and removing effective road freight subsidy while legislating max distances to get freight off the road onto more energy efficient options (rail & coastal shipping). It would obviously be expensive, but so is maintaining roads at a standard for the speed and size of trucks that have been allowed since 2014 - so its really a matter of choice. And that's before I even start talking about the possibilities for low-no emission passenger rail vs flying.

But, if we accept that no National or Labour led neo-liberal economics government is ever going to budget to reinstate rail to anything like it used to be pre 80s, then we can probably only maintain a handful of major routes for freight (setting aside all the other existing rail that either are already, or could be more heavily utilised for passenger):

• Napier-Palmerston North-New Plymouth (relabelling the Marton-New Plymouth & the Palmerston North-Gisborne lines)
• Hamilton-Tauranga
• Wellington-Palmerston North-Waikato-Auckland-Whangarei
• Invercargill-Dunedin-Christchurch
• Greymouth-Christchurch

That gives 3 routes West-East across the country, and 2 that go North-South and links all of the container ports to inland distribution centres. If someone who understands transport better than me can explain why putting freight on rail up to Picton to then take it off, truck it onto a ferry, then back onto a train in Wellington is still good then maintaining the Main North Line for freight would be good too.