The cost for upgrading rail infrastructure through the lower North Island has blown out by $50 million.<\/p>\n
The project has also been delayed by four years with a new completion date of 2028. There is no guarantee that the government can meet the shortfall.<\/p>\n
Eighteen new hybrid-electric passenger trains\u00a0are due to service the lower North Island between Wellington and Masterton and Wellington and Palmerston North.<\/p>\n
Upgrades to the track were due to be completed in anticipation of the new trains, with new electrical substations and train station infrastructure such as lifted platforms.<\/p>\n
The original business case for the substations had a price tag of $78.3m but a revised case shows that cost has now increased to $128m.<\/p>\n
The upgrades were also due to be completed this year but have now been delayed until 2027 \u2013 just one year before the trains are scheduled to arrive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The cost for upgrading rail infrastructure through the lower North Island has blown out by $50 million. The project has also been delayed by four years with a n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-681","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/681","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=681"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/681\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":682,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/681\/revisions\/682"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}