Peters hits Twyford’s light-rail talk

Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters has cast the future of light rail into further doubt just hours after a fellow Cabinet minister said the Government was “highly motivated” to progress the project.

The light rail idea — one of Labour’s flagship 2017 election policies — has been plagued with delays and doubt.

Pressed on the $6 billion project yesterday morning, Transport Minister Phil Twyford sounded upbeat.

He said the Government was “highly motivated” to progress it and deciding on a delivery partner was moving through the Cabinet process.

“With Cabinet processes it’s never a good idea to put an exact timeframe on [the decision] in terms of days or weeks — but soon.”

But Peters soon undermined that position, saying: “It’s not going to happen in the immediate term.”

He said costs for the light rail plan had blown out massively.

“We’ve always been for heavy rail around this country. Our programme is on target, as you know, and light rail has been suspended in terms of planning for the immediate future.”

About $1.2b was earmarked for rail in the Budget, on top of the $3.4b the Government has already allocated to heavy rail since 2017.

Meanwhile, the $6b light rail project is on hold as the Government turns its focus to the Covid response.

This month, Twyford’s office confirmed that a funding decision for modern-day trams was “on pause at the moment” because a decision on which delivery partner the Government worked with was on hold.

NZ Transport Agency and NZ Infra are the two bidders.