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NEW ZEALAND DEVELOPERS OF QUEENSTOWN MONORAIL HOPEFUL

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November, 2011

Developers of a proposed $200 million scenic monorail linking Queenstown and Milford Sound say they're hopeful of gaining DOC consent in the next few weeks.
Riverstone Holdings chief executive Bob Robertson said a decision was imminent on the plans for his company's 34km monorail from the Kiwiburn to TeAnau Downs.
This month the developers of the proposed competing $150 million, 11.3km underground bus-only tunnel linking the Routeburn and Hollyford roads announced they had been granted DOC consent in principle. That proposal, would now go to public consultation and progress to the resource consent stage.
Mr Robertson said he had understood his company's consent decision was to have been announced at the same time, but it would now be in the next few weeks.
My expectation is we would get there, he said.
The monorail proposal has been in the pipeline for 16 or 17 years, first mooted by former Queenstown Airport Corporation chairman Philip Phillips, who still retains a shareholding in the Riverstone project.
We're probably a couple of weeks behind in the race... Mr Robertson said.
The monorail proposal had been revamped three times now to meet DOC and other stakeholders' concerns after it originally cut through a section of Fiordland National Park.
We've been down that same road as Milford Dart on a long, long road. We made three major changes and moved it outside the park. We decided not to go down the hard route and move in sympathy with DOC and other stakeholders.
The monorail route would now begin with a catamaran ride from Queenstown to Mt Nicholas, then transport on an all-terrain bus system through the existing public road alongside the Von River to Kiwiburn where the monorail would cut through a forest, ``not a strategic one', to TeAnau Downs. Riverstone owns a hotel and backpackers lodge at TeAnau Downs.
We're trying to improve the journey not race.
The proposal was aimed at getting visitors closer to nature to experience and enjoy the outback without large numbers impacting the resource, Mr Robertson said.
The monorail, which could be operating within two years if consents were granted, could take 160 passengers at a time and would halve the travel time between Queenstown and Milford.
``We could cope with one million people a year (into Milford) - there are 500,000 at the moment.'
If successful it would be one of the longest monorails in the Southern Hemisphere travelling through ``some pretty special scenery'.
New Zealand needed to ``revive its tourism offering'.
We have to provide infrastructure to occur or we'll end up with a bad result.
New Zealand needed two or three significant new offerings to attract tourists back - a monorail, one other major South Island and one North Island development, Mr Robertson said.