New Zealand’s food system – from production to delivery – has been built around efficiency rather than resilience to climate change and natural disasters. But there are solutions.
Rail is a moronic idea if you want to increase resilience, it’s much easier to close a rail line, and much harder to divert freight than a road. We also have a lot more options as far as temporary solutions are concerned, just look at the temporary roadway that was built along SH1 around Kaikoura, or technology like the Bailey bridge.
As for the other technologies, they do little more than tell us they exist, with no analysis of how this would work, how viable it would be, or how much more expensive our food would be if we used them.
Overall, I feel no better informed after reading the article than I did before I read it, no shit a natural disaster would have an adverse effect on our food production.
Rail is just another option. When all freight is by road, it’s no better as a single slip will take a road out for months. The article is suggesting we shouldn’t have all our eggs in one basket.
The article sparked discussion. I think that’s a success. Not every article needs to solve the problem.
Article: 93% of freight is moved by road, we should try to diversify
You: All this article does it highlight problems, what’s the point in that?
Other commenter: Highlighting problems is a point in and of itself, but they actually suggested many ways to improve the situation
You: Taking some freight on rail is “moronic” when we can build temporary road bridges when they get washed away
Other commenter: Rail is an option to add to the mix, the article is suggesting we do a mix of options
You: There’s no point in putting any freight on rail, since there are some places rail doesn’t go to
Other commenter: Just because rail doesn’t go everywhere doesn’t mean we can’t diversify some freight onto rail
You: The railway lines don’t exist so we can’t put freight on them
You are using strawman arguments and seem to be deliberately ignoring or misinterpreting the responses you get. This is a place for good faith discussion, if you’re not going to actually read the responses you’re replying to it would be better if you didn’t reply at all.
If a railway line is closed and the roads are open then you can just throw the freight onto trucks. I don’t understand how you read an article suggesting we diversify the network onto coastal shipping and rail, and think that means we should ban the current methods. But rail is also more resilient than roads because it’s raised out of water, no pot holes, crashes are rare (and almost always vehicle vs train, which can have rail operating again pretty quickly), less affected by slow traffic. Getting a larger portion of long-distance freight onto rail will also improve things for other road users, in terms of less traffic, and moving more heavy freight onto rail will also be a huge benefit in terms of pot-hole prevention.
The only argument against rail that I can think of is that it would require hubs for loading/unloading trucks for the first and last mile. But in terms of Auckland/Wellington transport rail seems like a no-brainer, when currently there are probably thousands of trucks making the trip each day.
Just because there’s lots of trucks it doesn’t mean that rail is going to be suitable. Just off the top of my head, they may not be near the rail line which requires trucks anyway or have tight deadlnes.
Rail is a moronic idea if you want to increase resilience, it’s much easier to close a rail line, and much harder to divert freight than a road. We also have a lot more options as far as temporary solutions are concerned, just look at the temporary roadway that was built along SH1 around Kaikoura, or technology like the Bailey bridge.
As for the other technologies, they do little more than tell us they exist, with no analysis of how this would work, how viable it would be, or how much more expensive our food would be if we used them.
Overall, I feel no better informed after reading the article than I did before I read it, no shit a natural disaster would have an adverse effect on our food production.
Rail is just another option. When all freight is by road, it’s no better as a single slip will take a road out for months. The article is suggesting we shouldn’t have all our eggs in one basket.
The article sparked discussion. I think that’s a success. Not every article needs to solve the problem.
There’s very few places in NZ that have only one road to them, and those that do will likely not have a rail line to them.
That is not a reason to not diversify.
Uhh, what? The fact that the other option doesn’t exist is no excuse?
I’m going to summarise this comment chain so far:
Article: 93% of freight is moved by road, we should try to diversify
You: All this article does it highlight problems, what’s the point in that?
Other commenter: Highlighting problems is a point in and of itself, but they actually suggested many ways to improve the situation
You: Taking some freight on rail is “moronic” when we can build temporary road bridges when they get washed away
Other commenter: Rail is an option to add to the mix, the article is suggesting we do a mix of options
You: There’s no point in putting any freight on rail, since there are some places rail doesn’t go to
Other commenter: Just because rail doesn’t go everywhere doesn’t mean we can’t diversify some freight onto rail
You: The railway lines don’t exist so we can’t put freight on them
You are using strawman arguments and seem to be deliberately ignoring or misinterpreting the responses you get. This is a place for good faith discussion, if you’re not going to actually read the responses you’re replying to it would be better if you didn’t reply at all.
And you say I’m using strawman arguments? Grow up dave, and stop defending half arsed journalism.
If a railway line is closed and the roads are open then you can just throw the freight onto trucks. I don’t understand how you read an article suggesting we diversify the network onto coastal shipping and rail, and think that means we should ban the current methods. But rail is also more resilient than roads because it’s raised out of water, no pot holes, crashes are rare (and almost always vehicle vs train, which can have rail operating again pretty quickly), less affected by slow traffic. Getting a larger portion of long-distance freight onto rail will also improve things for other road users, in terms of less traffic, and moving more heavy freight onto rail will also be a huge benefit in terms of pot-hole prevention.
The only argument against rail that I can think of is that it would require hubs for loading/unloading trucks for the first and last mile. But in terms of Auckland/Wellington transport rail seems like a no-brainer, when currently there are probably thousands of trucks making the trip each day.
Just because there’s lots of trucks it doesn’t mean that rail is going to be suitable. Just off the top of my head, they may not be near the rail line which requires trucks anyway or have tight deadlnes.
Sure, not all freight makes sense to go by rail. But rail is hugely underused in NZ.
That’s if you can find them, heavy trucks aren’t typically sitting around waiting for work.