Move the Ports of Auckland! At some point.

You might not think about the freight supply chain. It is the virtual conveyor belt moving millions of tonnes of NZ products to ports for export, and carrying imported goods to the shops. Just like the baggage handling system in an airport, the hardware with sufficient capacity has to be in place and the operation has to be staffed and managed flawlessly.  But, really all you care about is that it works. 

I have spent more than 15 years researching how our transport infrastructure investments, operation of transport networks, and choices by individuals result in the efficient (or not) servicing of our access to activities, goods and markets. I have studied how civilizations and economies have organized freight supply chains since Ancient Rome. The last 70 years have been extraordinary, thanks to engineering, communications, and mostly thanks to low cost unlimited energy. I have focused on how new modelling and data can achieve better performance with much less energy and cost. This type of research is in the service of long-term thinking because the essential infrastructure we are talking about is very expensive and should last for centuries, well beyond any known reserves of oil. 

I am agnostic about current Auckland politics and personalities. I have served for the past year on the Upper North Island Supply Chain Working Group. My interest is to understand how the government investments can best serve the long-term wellbeing of the whole country. The right decisions made today about major infrastructure will facilitate the low carbon transition and support the economy and wellbeing of five generations of Kiwis. This isn’t politics as usual. But like I said, I’m agnostic about that. Your great grandkids will not care one iota what the political banter of 2019 was. They will only care if their freight supply chain works.   

It is clear that the current UNI supply chain is not efficient, it doesn’t work very well, and it is getting worse quickly. Freight logistics operators are doing the best they can, but there are some clear deficiencies in the infrastructure and operations management that are adding costs, exacerbating congestion, and putting NZ at disadvantage. If bold leadership does not provide for the needs of the freight supply chain, then it will not work, and even you, who have never thought about your freight supply chain, will know it is not working within 10 years. If the political vision does not extend beyond the immediate deficiencies, then you the people will spend billions on patches and fixes that don’t actually do more than keep the old system limping along into disarray.  

Imagine how the airport luggage handling system would work if only 7% of the suitcases could use the conveyor and the rest have to be brought to you at the gate. You would have to negotiate with an individual baggage handler to go out to the plane and get your suitcase and bring it in to you. The carriers will have mostly empty carts because you want your suitcase right now “just in time”. All the individual carriers with their carts are locked in a congested mess on the tarmac as there is limited access to the planes. The luggage carts driving around at the gates to bring you your suitcase causes mayhem as people and carts try to share the same space. The airplanes are competing against each other to get carriers. Even though the carriers charge per run for a suitcase, they really can’t make much profit this way. They do things to undercut each other to try to get more business. In addition, the carrier’s job is so unappealing that there is a shortage of people wanting to do it. A gatemaster gets a dividend from the couriers at each terminal of this imaginary airport. The gatemasters are threatened by the suggestion that they should cooperate, build a conveyor system, and move the carrier work out to just off loading planes and loading the conveyor. The conveyor system with consolidated cart handling operations would not be cheap, but it would work. Having a high capacity conveyor does not imply that handlers will lose their jobs, rather their work would be concentrated at each end of the conveyor and their tasks would be part of the whole well managed operation. Getting the efficient conveyor system built would require the gatemasters to work for the benefit of all. 

This is basically the system that currently exists in the UNI freight supply chain. Given that people aren't excited about the freight supply chain, I won’t go into detail about the deficiencies, problems and inefficiencies. Rather, I will lay out what will work, and how the current situation will transition to that modern and efficient freight supply chain of the future. 

The Upper North Island import and export freight will be well served by two well managed ports at Northport and Tauranga, but only if there is a modern national freight rail network connecting the ports to the inland ports, hubs and depots. Like the airport luggage conveyors, the national freight rail network runs behind the scenes, efficiently loading up, moving, and off-loading large volumes of freight to the right places for all of the different purposes in the economy.  The modern freight rail service will connect the ports to the “service entrances” for Auckland. Metroport will serve for the freight connecting to Tauranga, and a new Northwest inland hub will serve the freight connecting to Northport. Industries and warehouses build up around the rail freight hubs, and thus the truck trips for final deliveries are mostly local. The freight rail service also connects up the export consolidation hubs with the ports. The operations management of the ports and rail are cooperative, like the air traffic control at your airport. International shipping lines see New Zealand as one port of call, where containers and cargo are offloaded at the right port for the right final destination. This coordination, together with coastal shipping, manages the power of the giant shipping lines and keeps them paying a fair price. Thousands of trucks use a national logistics management system to make local deliveries and pick-up runs on the same route through use of modern GPS and IT. The way the UNI freight supply chain transitions to the efficient, low carbon system of the future is bold leadership and state of the art engineering.

I am agnostic about what Auckland does along the waterfront over the next 50 years. But it doesn’t matter if the people of Auckland want to transition from a port to an urban waterfront port with fresh fish markets and places to run and stadiums, because they can’t have it unless the North Auckland Line to Northport is built. What I do know is that, like many other cities, the time has come to move the freight delivery around to the service entrance. The operators of the port, KiwiRail and the trucking firms have done the best they can to keep the freight moving through Auckland’s front door, but it is not working well, and it will not serve into the future.