Grant puts rail back on track

The Budget’s $98 million boost for Wellington’s railway network is welcome. It was also inevitable that the Government would provide it, because parts of the network are falling apart.

The grant will help replace nearly 1300 timber poles supporting the overhead wires powering the trains. Greater Wellington regional councillor Barbara Donaldson says some services could have come to a halt within four years without it.

And the need to replace the poles is delaying other improvements in Wellington rail, including extra track to the line between Trentham and Upper Hutt. Since 2007, there have been 13 cases where the poles have failed in service.

Wellington’s commuter trains have their problems, but they are an essential and functioning part of the region’s transport service. If Auckland had a comparable network, it wouldn’t be in the dire transport mess that it is. Wellington is lucky by comparison.

The grant also shows that the Green criticism of National as a single-minded road-builder oblivious to public transport or alternative transport modes is not always right. In Wellington, a National-led Government has not only backed the commuter trains, it has also backed a network of cycleways in the capital.

The botched attempt to build a cycleway in Island Bay can’t be blamed on the Government, but on Wellington City Council mismanagement and the worldwide problem of revamping roads built for cars rather than bicycles.

The other big problem facing Wellington transport, however, remains unresolved and without a plan. It now seems that a new variation on the Basin Flyover could be in the offing. That, at least, is one way of looking at the recent formation of a new lobby group, Congestion-Free Wellington, which includes the Save the Basin anti-flyover group. Nobody wants to see a repeat of the prolonged battle of the basin, where a seemingly endless argument led to a surprise defeat when a board of inquiry canned the plan in 2014 after a lengthy hearing.

Officials are hoping to avoid a repeat by ‘‘consulting’’ heavily with stakeholders of every sort, a process that has led to extraordinary delays. The Let’s Get Wellington Moving working group was due to put forward its proposals by mid-2017, but they won’t now be put out for consultation till just before Christmas.

That means the uproar has been postponed till after the September election. The National-led Government won’t be unhappy about that. Whatever the working group comes up with, there will be a massive political argument about this.

Finally, there is another battle to be had over Wellington transport – the proposed lengthening of the airport runway. Finance Minister Steven Joyce has been consistently opposed to the idea of subsidising this project, but Wellington argues it would be a major economic boost.

The capital’s battle for Government support goes on.

The Budget has given a welcome boost to Wellington's rail network.