Councillors ‘shocked and surprised’ at move to scrap cycleway funding

Saturday, 9 September 2023

Cycling advocates gather outside the Christchurch City Council building before a council meeting earlier this year. (File photo)

Christchurch’s promised cycleway network could be scrapped before it’s finished in favour of spending more money maintaining the city’s roads.

An early draft of the city council’s 10-year capital budget has $138 million worth of cycleway funding removed, leaving some councillors “shocked and stunned”.

The only money for cycleways in the early draft is funding the Government has already committed to the city as part of its shovel-ready programme.

The controversial $17m wheels to wings cycleway down Harewood Rd has gone, along with the $27m Ōtākaro Avon route, which is the only cycleway proposed for the city’s east. It is separate to the meandering City to Sea shared pathway along the river.

About $29m to connect existing cycleways with local communities is also gone from the early draft budget.

Christchurch was once known as NZ's cycling capital, but today's numbers paint a vastly different picture. (First published September 1, 2022)

Projects that have made it in so far include $244m to reseal and resurface roads, $97m for kerb and channel, $87m to renew footpaths and $137m to boost public transport.

The figures were revealed to councillors for the first time at a briefing on the council’s 10-year budget, the long-term plan (LTP), earlier this week.

The briefings have not been made public in previous years, but the council is now publishing recordings after the meetings in an attempt to be more transparent.

The draft LTP will go out to public consultation in February, but what goes in that draft is currently being nutted out by staff and councillors.

Council transport head Lynette Ellis said during the briefing, the council had asked staff to focus the budget on renewing existing transport assets. It did not have the headroom to put everything in the budget.

“We are going to have some tough talks about what we put in and put out.”

An artist’s impression of the Wheels to Wings cycleway, which included reducing Harewood Rd from four lanes to two and putting in eight new car parks.

She admitted there was some “pretty significant” work that was not in the budget, including the cycleways.

Not funding cycleways had the potential to affect the council’s ability to meet its emissions targets, Ellis said.

“It’s a balance of trying to achieve environmental outcomes and looking after what we have got.”

Omitting cycleways from the budget came as a surprise to councillors as well as cycling advocates, who are baffled by the move, leaving some to question where the direction had come from.

At one point, during the briefing, deputy mayor Pauline Cotter said: “At the risk of being thick, where is the cycleway programme in this list?”

City councillor Sara Templeton says cutting or delaying cycleways is “short-term thinking”.

After the briefing, councillor Melanie Coker said the proposal came as a “complete surprise” and was at odds with every presentation she had seen from the transport team.

“I believe that any attempt to slow down or stop cycleways and public transport priority shows a lack of understanding of all the benefits of providing safe transport choices.”

Councillor Sara Templeton, who holds the council’s climate change portfolio, said she was stunned.

The letter of expectation put together by councillors and the mayor, to steer the direction of the LTP, made it clear that climate resilience and emissions reduction needed to be a priority, she said.

“I expect to see an option presented that helps us meet our approved emissions reduction targets.

City councillor Sam MacDonald has previously voted against “gold-plated” cycleways.

“Short-term thinking is a disservice to our communities facing the challenges of a climate-impacted future.”

Templeton said the move was also against what communities had told the council was important to them during the recent What Matters Most campaign. Climate change and having transport choices were in the top five out of 17 choices.

Roads and footpaths were in the top five too.

Councillor Jake McLellan believed the move had something to do with mayor Phil Mauger and councillor Sam MacDonald, who have previously voted against “gold-plated” cycleways.

McLellan said it was “cheeky move” on their behalf, but he did not think they had the numbers to get it through.

“I don’t blame staff for spit-balling ideas. I do not think there is wide public support for the gutting of the cycleway programme.”

Dr Simon Kingham says fixing pot holes won’t fix climate change.

MacDonald said the assertion that he and the mayor had pushed the idea to get rid of the cycleways was just not true.

“It’s genuinely not something Phil or I have said (to staff).”

He said McLellan was “jumping at shadows”.

MacDonald said the council’s capital programme needed to be affordable and deliverable and the council had told staff they needed to protect the assets the city had first.

Dr Simon Kingham, chief science adviser at the Ministry of Transport and University of Canterbury academic, said the move was so frustrating, just when he felt the city was really starting to make some progress with cycleways.

“I was shocked actually. It’s not what I expected at the moment.

“Fixing pot holes is not going to fix climate change, if anything it makes people drive a bit faster.”

Spokes Canterbury chairperson Don Babe said it had been a depressing week for cycling advocates with the cycling budget news and a council decision to look at redesigning a section of cycleway on Aorangi Rd that had already been consulted on.

To stop the cycleway network before it was finished was “absurd”, Babe said, but people had voted for councillors who said “I support cycleways but…”.

The council first decided in 2013 to build a network of 13 on-road cycleways. It was supposed to take five years to complete.

Five routes are fully open, four are partially completed, and another four are still to be built.