Hopefully, the solution is new boats that are a more sensible size, and don’t need the extensive infrastructure upgrades the new fleet would have required. One of the cancelled designs would have been a similar displacement to our current fleet of three.
I really hope the solution isn’t another clapped out beater from Europe.
Maybe this advice should have been taken before you cancelled the ferry contract.
Govt: We’re taking advice.
Voters: And following that advice?
Govt: …
Voters: And following that advice, right?
Mate, the infrastructure is reaching end of life anyway and needs replacing.
The benefit of doing it all at once is they were enlarging both terminals to allow better offloading of freight. Pay more now to spend less later.
I respect the sentiment, but the project was on track to be more than a billion dollars more than the initial estimates, which would have been a cost overrun of more than 100%
That’s a colossal blow out.
Yeah, I hear you on that. But my view is, that’s how much it cost. Cancelling it won’t make it cheaper in the future. Sometimes we just need to bite the bullet and pay for what we need.
It’s more like an issue with initial quotes than the actual cost of the thing. The problem is, the public sees a big cost and screams “they’re wasting our money!”, but that’s not really it at all. The government is trying to invest in needed infrastructure that benefits all of us in the future. Literally their job.
You know they aren’t going to do shit. They are just going to wait until one of the ships stops working and then give one of their funders a huge contract to provide the replacement until it gets fixed which will of course never happen.
If we’re going to the effort of infrastructure, what’s the reason for staying with Picton instead of somewhere near Blenheim? As I understand it, avoiding the restrictions of the Malborough Sounds could shave a significant amount of time off the trip.
If our government managed to blow out the projected cost of upgrading our existing infrastructure by more than the cost of the boats themselves, can you imagine what they’d do if they tried to build a whole new port somewhere?
Although I do like the idea of moving to somewhere like Port Underwood.
