If we're going to the effort of infrastructure, what's the reason for staying with Picton instead of somewhere near Blenheim? As I understand it, avoiding the restrictions of the Malborough Sounds could shave a significant amount of time off the trip.
this post was submitted on 24 Sep 2024
8 points (100.0% liked)
Aotearoa / New Zealand
39 readers
1 users here now
Kia ora and welcome to !newzealand, a place to share and discuss anything about Aotearoa in general
- For politics , please use !politics@lemmy.nz
- Shitposts, circlejerks, memes, and non-NZ topics belong in !offtopic@lemmy.nz
- If you need help using Lemmy.nz, go to !support@lemmy.nz
- NZ regional and special interest communities
Rules:
FAQ ~ NZ Community List ~ Join Matrix chatroom
Banner image by Bernard Spragg
Got an idea for next month's banner?
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
If our government managed to blow out the projected cost of upgrading our existing infrastructure by more than the cost of the boats themselves, can you imagine what they'd do if they tried to build a whole new port somewhere?
Although I do like the idea of moving to somewhere like Port Underwood.
Yeah, my assunmption was that if you're going to build a new docking platform and building to support the giant new boats, you are probaby most of the way to to cost of setting up fresh in a closer place. And you are already significantly increasing the capacity of the crossings if you cut an hour off the trip.
It seems like the reason for the much larger boats were favoured is because they can take trains. It would be interesting to know if this is actually a financially superiour solution compared to, say, coastal shipping.
We've had far smaller vessels in the past that have been rail enabled though, even smaller than what we currently have.
An argument against moving is we wouldn't just have to build the port, we would need road, rail, and all the utilities as well, whereas in Picton they're already there.
Yeah, I'd be curious if a private company could build themselves a smallish port and start running a premium service where they could charge more because of the shorter travel time. You wouldn't have the supporting township but that could grow overtime as you pick up more customers.
That's been done in a way with a catamaran service, the Fast Cat ferries were brought in to compete with them. I think they sailed from Porirua.
Part of the problem is you would have to base yourself in Port Underwood, which is kinda the middle of nowhere, which would erase some of the time savings.
This page mentions a "Top cat" ferry as well as the lynx ones. As far as I can tell though, these are faster boats rather than shorter routes.
Maybe this advice should have been taken before you cancelled the ferry contract.
Govt: We're taking advice.
Voters: And following that advice?
Govt: ...
Voters: And following that advice, right?
You know they aren't going to do shit. They are just going to wait until one of the ships stops working and then give one of their funders a huge contract to provide the replacement until it gets fixed which will of course never happen.
Mate, the infrastructure is reaching end of life anyway and needs replacing.
The benefit of doing it all at once is they were enlarging both terminals to allow better offloading of freight. Pay more now to spend less later.
I respect the sentiment, but the project was on track to be more than a billion dollars more than the initial estimates, which would have been a cost overrun of more than 100%
That's a colossal blow out.
Yeah, I hear you on that. But my view is, that's how much it cost. Cancelling it won't make it cheaper in the future. Sometimes we just need to bite the bullet and pay for what we need.
It's more like an issue with initial quotes than the actual cost of the thing. The problem is, the public sees a big cost and screams "they're wasting our money!", but that's not really it at all. The government is trying to invest in needed infrastructure that benefits all of us in the future. Literally their job.