That's something a lot of folks both in & out of NZ don't appreciate. We are very long; that's why you can wear shorts in Paihia in June while its freezing in Gore!

So geographically, in terms of sea crossings we have it easier than Japan in only having to really consider 1 - but their's are much shorter (and shallower?) crossings so they were able to bridge where we can neither bridge nor tunnel.

But also, in terms of mass transit there is absolutely no need for NZ to consider it anyway as we just don't have anything near a comparable population. So the routes we have to consider are much, much shorter and contained within distinct metropolitan areas.^1^ Where Light Rail shines is by being 3-4 times more capacity in a single unit than a bus, hopefully having much faster acceleration & deceleration and being routed ideally on an exclusive right of way.

Yeah, busways can be exclusive as well, but every bus requires a driver; and we've just been through a period of driver shortage destroying schedules around the country so its hard to see moar busses being a great long term solution.

1 Though if we could speed up regional rail^2^ there's things in the possible category like commutes from Hawkes Bay -> Wellington, Bay of Plenty -> Auckland. And in some of those areas there are routes that could probably provide a convenient railcar now - eg Waipukurau -> Napier.

2 Queensland has narrow gauge like us and with tilt technology I think was looking at getting trainsets that could go up to 170km/h. Other than that NZ would have to adjust all of our rail network to standard gauge which would also require updating all the rolling stock so with all the short term thinking in government would never be palatable.