Claims of 22,000 TEU ships coming to NZ are rubbish (as are closing POAL in favour of Northport)

A fellow called Ian Turner posting on the Campaign for Better Transport page is a fantasist who believes that Maersk Line are going to send their 22,000 TEU container ships to New Zealand in the next few years. According to Turner and a very few associates this means every other port in NZ except Northport will have to close down as none of them can be made deep enough to take these ships. They even believe Port of Auckland should close down so that it can be moved to Northport.

Some facts are in order here:

1. There are no plans by Maersk Line or anyone else to bring 22,000 TEU container ships to New Zealand any time in the foreseeable future. 
2. Closing POAL is not widely supported even though there has been a ginger group trying to stop the further development of it. 
3. POAL has a consent to dredge their channel deeper to handle the size of ships that are likely to come to New Zealand over the next 20 years. 
4. Currently Port of Tauranga is the only port in NZ that can handle the 9000 TEU container ships, other ports are gearing up to equip themselves and/or dredge to receive ships of this size. This size of ship is the largest container vessel expected to visit NZ between now and roughly 2035. 
5. There will be incremental increase in ships visiting in NZ gradually over the future but there is in no way going to be a sudden leap from 9000 TEU to 22,000 TEU, it is just not going to happen that way.
6. The NZ Shipping Council believes there need to be four container ports over the whole of NZ able to receive the largest vessels (9000 TEU), not one single port. This is very important for several reasons
• The international ships move a significant volume of domestic containers around the coastline of NZ as it is. This is important because moving this volume by sea is much cheaper than land based transport options, including rail.
• Landing containers closest to the urban centre they are going to is much more cost effective than railing them all from Northport to anywhere in NZ. 
• Railing from Northport to Auckland would require huge expenditure on the North Auckland Line which is a sunk cost, whereas nothing needs to be spent on the blue highway or the port infrastructure to keep moving the containers by sea as they are now.
• Northport would need billions of dollars spent on it to equip it to handle large container ships. They are currently no better equipped than Port of Napier in this regard without a dedicated container wharf and proper cranes, they just have mobile cranes which are slower working than overhead cranes. 
• By the time you get down to the South Island the cost of moving the containers would be much greater. At the moment there is already coastal shipping used to move containers by sea between Tauranga and Timaru. If you are going to use a ship to move the international containers it may as well be the ship that carried them on their overseas voyage.
7. The four ports mentioned above being likely Auckland, Tauranga, Lyttelton and Otago. Hence Napier, Centreport, Nelson and Northport would not be international container terminals.
8. Similarly the Shipping Council has had the research done, by international transport experts, to determine the size trend for container ships, they are credibly saying there is no likelihood of the Maersk Triple E or any similar size of container ship (mega-ship) coming to NZ in the foreseeable future.
9. One of the biggest issues with mega ships is that the BCR actually drops even though they are cheaper to run per unit of freight, the reason is that very large sums have to be spent on infrastructure on the land to handle these very large volumes of containers that would be moving on and off such a ship.
10. If this type of ship came to NZ it would reduce the frequency of shipping services, this is very material when handling perishable goods that we export overseas.
11. Northport is no more of a deepwater port than say Port of Tauranga. There is no inherent advantage that Northport has for large ships than any of the other major ports. The nonsense statements that Northport is the only ship that can handle Triple E class ships is wrong firstly because they will never come here and secondly because contrary to claims, all the other ports can be dredged easily to the required depth.
12. Northport does not have a deeper channel that is free from dredging compared to other major ports. It would still need to be dredged. There is a very small advantage over Tauranga in terms of channel length but that is inconsequential. There is some advantage over Auckland, Lyttelton and Otago which all have relatively long entrance channels that need to be dredged but in practice this will not amount to much.

The idea of closing POAL in favour of Northport is being championed by a few hardcore rail enthusiasts and most notably Winston Peters and others from NZ First. Since Winston Peters and Shane Jones have strong connections in the Northland region it is obvious they are playing pork barrel politics to try and buy votes. The entire proposal is ridiculous. It now looks like the government wants Ports of Auckland to stay where it is. They have committed to a ports study for the Upper North Island but that is all.

Ten reasons Auckland Transport has chosen light rail

Very pertinent as heavy rail fans are hoping they can still get their preferred line to the airport against a backlash from the public around the rest of NZ against a national fuel tax levy.

Ten reasons Auckland Transport has chosen light rail

1. Heavy rail won't address the lack of terminal space space in the CBD

2. Heavy rail provides less network resilience and operational constraints limit its capacity

3. Mass transit on the airport to city corridor via Dominion Road will supplement the rail network and make it more resilient

4. Light rail can provide a one-seat ride to the city centre, just like heavy rail

5. The Dominion Road corridor offers service benefits for the whole isthmus and addresses access issues at each end of the corridor

6. Heavy rail access from Manukau to airport via Puhinui could cause overloading and sharing with freight, for one extra station and no extra catchment

7. The issue of bus congestion in the city centre remains a problem under heavy rail

8. Light rail provides accessibility, connectivity, catchment, housing and development potential for the same investment

9. Light rail serves the main Auckland isthmus

10. Light rail adds extra corridors and transport modes to the network, making it more resilient.

https://at.govt.nz/projects-roadworks/airport-and-mangere-rail/

https://at.govt.nz/projects-roadworks/light-rail/

https://www.greaterauckland.org.nz/2017/04/03/what-about-airport-heavy-rail-from-puhinui/

https://at.govt.nz/media/1971230/south-western-airport-multi-modal-corridor-project-scoping-report-final-draft.pdf

https://at.govt.nz/media/1866351/item-11-6-smart-preferred-way-forward-final.pdf

Tunnel safety improvements

Since the Pike River mine disaster about eight years ago a lot more attention has been paid to the safety risks of operating trains through long tunnels. Some particular examples of changes have been the need to have fire suppression fitted to locomotives hauling trains through these tunnels, and extra locomotives required where necessary on the trains as well.

An example that shows just how much change has happened in recent years can be seen from the comparison with the report into a locomotive fire in the Rimutaka Tunnel in 1995. The locomotive was hauling a passenger excursion from Wellington to Featherston and the fire was discovered while uphill from Upper Hutt in the tunnel. The action taken was to keep running the engine until the summit in the tunnel was reached, then shut down the locomotive and coast downhill towards Featherston.

The TAIC report is number 95-104 and can be found here. What I found astonishing was that it was considered acceptable to have no radio comms in the tunnel. The second much more serious issue that was not even acknowledged by TAIC was the risk of the train running away through lack of braking capacity. With the locomotive shut down there is no dynamic braking available, and the air supply from the locomotive will eventually run out if the air brakes are used, as they must have been in this case. 

This is probably some of the reason why passenger trains through the Otira Tunnel now have to have a locomotive at the rear as well as at the front.

Port development proposals for the West Coast

The South Island West Coast has had a problem keeping ports open that can handle large ships, which has become more of an issue since the 1960s in particular. There have been a lot of proposals to have better ports on the West Coast, including options that have been considered for a deep water port at Westport. Ones that I have read about recently were put forward in 1946, 1971, 1985 and 2005 in particular:

• In 1946 F W Furkert, a former government PWD engineer, wrote a report suggesting an option for a deep water port development off Tauranga Bay. He discounted further extension of the harbour moles which was not giving long term outcomes. In the event, this option was not proceeded with and a small scale extension of the moles was constructed in the late 1960s. This appears to have been, as predicted, a waste of money, since the main problem with the moles has been the sand flow past them filling up the foreshore and making the entrance shallower.
• In 1971, a government committee looked at the options for a deep water port development off the coast just north of Westport. The estimated cost at the time would have been around $500 million in today's dollars but even the cost saving of shipping 12 million tonnes of coal through this port would have paid for it within a few years (the peak coal traffic shipped on the Midland Line annually would have done this in about four years). But the politicians decided they did not want to spend this money so nothing was done.
• In 1987 the port option was looked at again. Holcim (NZ Cement Holdings) proposed to develop a new terminal to enable its cement boats to have reliable operation from Westport. The company had previously examined options for relocating to Oamaru. In the event, it was apparently economic conditions prevailing at the time and the closing of the competing Golden Bay Cement works at Tarakohe that stopped this development from going ahead. The development at Cape Foulwind would have only handled 10,000 tonne ships and its deepwater potential would appeared to have been limited. With the shelving of Holcim's proposal the rail network was developed to handle larger locomotives and wagons. From this has come the 30 wagon trains hauled by DX locomotives that we have today, and the replacement of electric traction with diesel haulage through the Otira Tunnel. However although the cost of rail haulage per unit of weight has come down, the capacity limit has been reached at the Otira Tunnel and Kiwirail is not making any money on coal haulage. There are also serious concerns over the safety of the Otira Tunnel banking operation.
• West Coast Regional Council has continued to push the cause of port development and it commissioned a report in 2005 which put a case.

Now I believe WCRC has correctly addressed the issue in that there are no major ports in the West Coast region. And in fact further research tells me the dispute between shipping and rail has been a longstanding one, and led to a standoff between Solid Energy and Tranz Rail from 1994 to the early 2000s when the former was successful in forcing TRL to lower its haulage prices for the traffic. However the cost of long distance rail haulage remains a significant sticking point for the development of the West Coast region. Quoting the study, "the West Coast is a region disadvantaged by its location, which is further from ports and population centres than any other region in New Zealand. It is the only major region further than 150 km from a major port or population centre. "

Unfortunately a continued lack of commitment from politicians has led to the situation where the failure to develop a proper port for the West Coast is strangling its economy as the high cost of land based transport causes industries to be mothballed.