NZ Rail Sector: KiwiRail making inroads into infrastructure deficit
October 29th, 2009
KiwiRail is continuing to make good progress into reducing the infrastructure deficit caused by decades of under funding of the rail network but it still has much work to do. KiwiRail’s latest annual report shows the company laid 33.4km of new track during the 08/09 financial year, three times more than the figure achieved in 2003/04 under private ownership. However, at this rate it will take more than 120 years to replace the entire network’s track measured in route kilometres. Track and ballast has a depreciable life of just 25 - 40 years.
The length of track to receive new sleepers has more than doubled since 2003/04 from 50km to 103km while the length of track de-stressed to eliminate 40km/h speed restrictions during hot weather totalled 156km - the highest since 2005/06. The state of the network’s bridges is also improving with a four-fold increase in the number of wooden bridge piers replaced for the year at 132 compared with just 35 in 2006/07. The net effect, apart from improvements in efficiency, is a significant reduction in derailments which have fallen from 61 in 2003/04 to 36 for the 2008/09 financial year.
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