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.
We’ve had far smaller vessels in the past that have been rail enabled though, even smaller than what we currently have.
An argument against moving is we wouldn’t just have to build the port, we would need road, rail, and all the utilities as well, whereas in Picton they’re already there.
Yeah, I’d be curious if a private company could build themselves a smallish port and start running a premium service where they could charge more because of the shorter travel time. You wouldn’t have the supporting township but that could grow overtime as you pick up more customers.
That’s been done in a way with a catamaran service, the Fast Cat ferries were brought in to compete with them. I think they sailed from Porirua.
Part of the problem is you would have to base yourself in Port Underwood, which is kinda the middle of nowhere, which would erase some of the time savings.
This page mentions a “Top cat” ferry as well as the lynx ones. As far as I can tell though, these are faster boats rather than shorter routes.