Down at the Station

摘要

In the 2020 Budget the government has invested $1.2 billion into KiwiRail. This funding includes $400 million towards replacing the present ferries, $421 million to continue the locomotive replacement programme and $246 million (plus a $148 million top-up of the National Land Transport Fund) towards infrastructure maintenance and upgrading rolling stock. In early June KiwiRail said it had no choice but to buy more Chinese-made diesel locomotives - even though they've been troublesome and unreliable for more than a decade. KiwiRail needs another ten of the DL class engines to cope with increasing freight volumes in the North Island, on top of the 63 of the class it already has. In the past 12 months KiwiRail's figures show that none of the engines have met KiwiRail's performance target of 80,000 kilometres Mean Distance Between Failure (MDBF). MDBF measures the average distance between failures that cause a delay of 15 minutes or more. This can be due to a number of causes, including issues with the engine and traction systems, software issues, or relatively minor electrical faults such as with the gauge lighting or air conditioning.