Rotary Club of Waikanae
Bulletin No. 09 – 44th Year

It was good to see President Tony back with us again and he welcomed our speaker Brian Jackson to a well attended meeting.

Notices: 

Barry Herbert expressed his thanks for the feed back on the change of venue for our meal. Richard Starke indicated that we have received a letter from past exchange student Freddie - Steve Botica will post this on our website so we can read it at our leisure.

Sergeant:

Dave Murton extracted his fines from our attitudes to raising the driving age and the proposed Capital Gains Tax.

Raffle:

Winners this week were Steve Botica, Graham Rolston, Gordon Patching and John Algar.

Reminders:

reasurer John Bowater reminded us all, if we have not done so already, to pay our subs prior to August 30th to be in the draw.

Our speaker:

Brian Jackson was introduced by Brent Bohanna. Brian, a local resident, will be known to most by his business in Lower Hutt - formerly King Nissan, and then King Toyota.

A member of The Hutt Rotary Club, he has been chairman of the Motor Trade Assn. Vehicle Testing, Seaview Marina, Te Omanga Hospice and beside other interests, is a Board Member of the NZTA and Kiwi Rail.

Brian said he would give a 'ramble' through some of what is happening in the transport area and affecting our region. Since Fay Ritchwhite were involved with Kiwi Rail - Toll ran a very efficient system, but did not put anything back in. The NZ Government was really the only logical buyer because they had access to the big money that was necessary to get it 'back on track'. When one realises that it costs a million dollars to recondition one locomotive and they have 20 to do. We also have to recondition all the carriages purchased from the UK . NZ will be building NZ new carriages in the future, plus the new units for Auckland .(New Units for Wellington. are being built in Korea) 20 new locos are coming from China (with German engines and British electrics) at $5.5 million each.- It will need deep pockets to sustain all this expense. Locally, The double tracking is going well, problems with new stations, timetable frequencies, parking etc. are still being worked through Fortunately we still have our railway workshops in Lower Hutt and Dunedin, so Kiwi Rail is going to be very important to NZ. and will change the way we travel on trains - Brian said it has a great future.

On our roading system - Brian said that an earlier Government decided that Transit could not handle both the funding and the construction of our State Highways so formed two separate organisations. Labour then merged them again, and we now have the NZ Transport Agency, with 1400 staff, Over responsible for everything that gets people moving. The Combined assets amount to 24 Billion. (bigger than Telecom and Fonterra combined) Work is funded - Passenger Transport, 40% Regional Council and 60% Transport Agency. Roading, 50% local Councils and 50% Transport Agency. State Highways are separate and now that 7 routes of National significance have been targeted, they will be spending really big money in the next few years. For us, Levin to Wellington is now accepted as 'Urgent' (particularly McKay's to Wellington Airport) they will be spending one Billion per year over 10 years on that. Transmission Gully is still on the agenda, there are up to 12 people working on that project which will rejoin the State Highway at Linden. There has been concern that due to the recession , some of the smaller contractors might have been driven out of business. Because these companies will be needed with the bigger projects to come, hundreds of minor road works are being carried out in the meantime to keep them going. The larger companies are O.K. because they have ongoing maintenance contracts. Brian said that because NZ is so spread out, and with only 4.5million people, large areas are subject to regular weather damage and with the size of trucks ever increasing (a truck does the equivalent damage of 10,000 cars.) it is exceptionally expensive to keep up with increasing roading costs.

John Algar handled many questions - and a few interesting points came out. (1) Our Western link highway project has been delayed by Transit, who have back tracked and forced changes on to the KCDC. (2) The Waikanae bridge is under discussion today - Aug.20th. (3) The Government is looking seriously at the age of our vehicle fleet. (4) The private sector just can't compete with Government on building major highway projects - profit has to be made - Government does not and can access cheaper funds. (5) State Highways are resealed every 8 years- all work is supervised and audited. (6) Roading design is changing - finally, to give the road user a better ride.

John Algar thanked Brian on behalf of the Club, presenting him with the Rotary pen. He said that Brian had answered a lot of topical questions for us all. He asked Brian - will we ever see another bridge over the river? - Brian said yes, but don't ask when.

Parting Thought:

From Richard Starke. 'If a thing is worth having - it's worth waiting for." 

Statistics:     Raffle    $64        Sergeant:     $ 47      Members Present:    26