I hope Environment Canterbury isn’t bothering listening to Waimakariri MP Matt Doocey.  

He’s not impressed that the regional council is going to spend money doing a business case for a rail passenger service between Rangiora, Christchurch, and Rolleston.  

Matt Doocey says it’s nothing more than a pie-in-the-sky idea and, given we’re in a cost-of-living crisis, he says ECAN should stick to its knitting and focus on getting costs down and reducing rates. 

But what Matt Doocey should be doing —instead of criticising ECAN— is praising it for showing some initiative.  

He should be praising it for showing that it’s prepared to do the kind of big sky, big picture thinking that local government hasn’t been doing, and which we’ve been saying it should be doing.  

I think Doocey isn’t reading the room, and I suspect that there will be a lot of excitement about ECAN pushing this rail idea. What’s more, ECAN has put some money aside for a possible rail project.  

Plus, it’s talking about not just limiting this rail passenger idea to Rangiora, Christchurch, and Rolleston. It’s saying that, once up and running, the service could be extended to places like Amberley, Ashburton, Timaru, and even further south into Otago and Southland.  

I’m loving the idea. I’m also loving the fact that ECAN is prepared to put some skin in the game. To spend some money and find out once-and-for-all how much of a goer this could be.  

ECAN is onto something because if there’s a common complaint about how the earthquake rebuild played out, it would be the fact that, despite all the talk that Christchurch was going to be the most modern city in the country, it’s not. Because we’ve just stuck to the same old, same old when it comes to things like transport.  

And local government has to carry some of the blame for that. But now, ECAN wants to make good on that.  

What this comes down to for me is this: what do expect of local government?  

Do we just expect it to stick to its knitting and do the basic boring stuff? Or do we expect our councils to be the big picture thinkers?  

If you’re like me and you want to see councils doing the big picture stuff, then you’ll agree that we’ve lost the ability to think big.  

Mark my words, there’ll be no shortage of people running in the local body elections later this year banging-on about sticking to the basics.  

Whereas ECAN is showing that it’s thinking about the future, which is exactly the kind of thing I want to see not just from ECAN, but all our councils.  

Tell that to Waimakariri MP Matt Doocey, though.  

He’s saying today: ‘Rather than coming up with pie in the sky motions, ECAN should focus on reducing rates which have rapidly increased - putting more pressure on ratepayers in a cost-of-living crisis.’’  

Compare that to the likes of ECAN councillor Joe Davies who is saying we can’t wait 20 or 30 years, and we need a solution in the next five to ten years.  

He says: ‘There’s a corridor already in place so there would be significantly lower set-up costs and this is an opportunity to link Rangiora and Rolleston to the city.’’  

So he sees opportunity. Matt Doocey sees obstacles.   

ECAN sees opportunity and is doing something about it, which is the approach I want to see a lot more of from our local councils. 

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