Matisyahu's Blog

Woke up this morning at 9:30am however I wasn’t in much of a hurry so I pottered around the house and then I went for my 8km walk. I arrived back home, had a shower then enjoyed a cup of coffee before work while catching up on some news. The weather was nice and I on my walk I can see that the rail upgrades are taking place and I think the eventual goal is to replace all the old wooden infrastructure with steel long with the gradual repalce of the wooden sleepers with concrete. It has been a bit of a piecemeal process because the funding is done from year to year so the focus is mainly around upgrading those that need upgrading first and then working from that down to the non-critical upgrades that need taking place.

There is talk about upgrading the current Waterloo interchange in Lower Hutt however unfortunately the NZTA have decided not to fund its replacement (link). You’d think that in an election year that this would have been an easy win for the National-Act-NZ First government to fundm but once again they’re showing that when it comes to National one can set ones watch their political philosophy of a) tax cuts b) deregulation c) privatisation d) build a road and I guess if it weren’t for NZ First (I’m certainly no fan of NZ First) in the government advocating for rail then I wouldn’t be surprised if National just ignored rail completely like they’ve done every time they’ve gotten into government.