Express No. 269
This policy is very relevant to the Napier-Gisborne Line because the line was damaged by tree cutting debris that blocked culverts and caused the major washouts that helped close the line.
KiwiRail’s
drive to cut spending across the business is leading the company to
identify ways to retrieve costs incurred from third-party damage.
KiwiRail Senior Corporate Counsel Lloyd Berryman says the company will
also be looking to address business interruption costs affecting
KiwiRail’s revenue. “Whether it’s wagons, track damage, a bridge strike
or establishing a lease we’ll be increasingly looking toensure
we aren’t subsidising something someone else should be paying for.
“We’re looking at more ways to tighten up our reporting processes to
capture the information we need to ensure we can do this effectively.
One example of where where we’ve been successful at doing this over the
last year and a half is bridge strike repairs,” says Lloyd.
Last
month Lloyd put on a hi-vis to join I&E’s Pierre Benson and view
first-hand the damage caused by some haphazard forestry harvesting on
private land adjoining the North Auckland Line. As Lloyd’s first time in
a hi-rail he had a lot of fun but he was quite saddened by the state of
the track. What he saw shocked him, “It was best described as a
bombsite– the extent of the track damage caused by blocked culverts and
drains due to tree debris was alarming. The neighbours’ lack of care and
respect for our tracks have resulted in formation subsiding and slips
which puts our team and business operations at risk. It really brought
home the importance of KiwiRail working together to keep each other
safe,” says Lloyd. “We’ve spoken with the owners of the forest, and are
formally writing to them. We will be outlining the importance of the
owners developing a suitable long-term management plan following
harvesting, as well as working through how KiwiRail will recover its
costs and damage.”
