Direction of travel on transport in Christchurch is changing

Tuesday, 18 June 2024

A file photo of construction on Te Kaha, Christchurch’s new stadium, in March. Mike Yardley says a plan to permanently reduce the speed on adjacent Madras St to 30kph “would knee-cap the efficient flow of cross-city traffic”.

Mike Yardley is a Christchurch-based writer on current affairs and travel and a regular opinion contributor

OPINION: Much of the Christchurch City Council’s transport project work programme looks set to be up-ended.

The direction of travel is changing, with the Government’s spending taps being turned off from subsidising many of the pet projects that have dominated the city’s agenda in recent years.

Expectations have faded that the NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) will continue co-funding major cycleway routes. The most notable casualty could be the highly polarising Wheels to Wings cycleway, which would entail lane-dropping Harewood Rd’s four-lane configuration into a two-lane road and removing scores of on-street car parks.

Previously costed by the council as a $19 million project in 2020 – that was predicated on NZTA picking up half of the tab. To date, $5.4m has already been expended on the planning work, with external transport consultants being the prime beneficiaries.

However, the total project cost estimate has now ballooned to $27m-$35m, with council staff conceding a fortnight ago that no NZTA funding is likely to be forthcoming under the Government’s new settings.

In the coming weeks, city councillors will have to vote on whether to proceed with, defer or cancel the project.

The planned Wheels to Wings cycleway on Harewood Rd could be one of the notable casualties of a change in transport focus under the new Government, Mike Yardley says.

Surely, as a pragmatic measure to salvage something from this shambles, councillors should authorise the $4m of capital funding on budget for the coming year to be deployed to actioning the much-awaited installation of traffic lights at the Breens/Gardiners/Harewood Rd intersection.

A similar cloud has engulfed another controversial council project: the planned $34m spend-up on the streets surrounding Te Kaha. There’s no disagreement over the need to upgrade the water infrastructure – which is under way, but the proposed slow-zoning and pedestrianising makeover to a scrum of streets, on the fringe of the stadium, always looked like gratuitous ideological over-reach.

It was also predicated on attracting $13m of funding from the taxpayer. Again, the smoke signals from NZTA carry the unmistakable whiff that this project won’t pocket any such subsidy. NZTA’s regional relationships director, James Caygill, tells me that consideration of the council’s co-funding request “has been deferred until the National Land Transport Programme (NLTP) is adopted in September” following the finalisation of the Government Policy Statement (GPS).

Christchurch man Allan Taunt videos himself cycling down Harewood Rd, where the Wheels to Wings cycleway is planned.

The proposals to widen footpaths to 5.8 metres and cut speed limits to 10kph and 30kph on Lichfield, Madras, Tuam and Barbadoes streets should surely be shredded.

One of the most egregious aspects of the council’s grand design is to cut the speed limit on Madras St to 30kph. It would be permanent, not variable.

I can fully appreciate the need to lower the speed on Madras St, or even close part of the road, when stadium events are on – but the spectre of permanently slow-zoning this critical urban connector in the one way street network, would knee-cap the efficient flow of cross-city traffic.

It’s inevitable this proposal will have to be aborted, because it will be in violation of the Transport Minister’s proposed new Land Transport Rule: Setting of Speed Limits 2024.

Which brings me to the biggest project on the chopping block – the city council’s wholesale reduction to speed limits on 2000 roads last July, at a cost of $6.4m. (Not that the police enforced it.)

Those changes were the first phase of its Speed Management Plan, unleashing 30kph and 40kph street signs across sections of suburbia, not to mention the proliferation of raised platforms.

It was obvious that slower speed limits wouldn’t survive a change in government, but a majority of councillors refused to read the room and rammed through those changes regardless.

Beyond phase one, the council’s wider Safe Speed Plan ultimately envisaged permanently cutting speed limits on virtually all of Christchurch’s 3938 roads. Consultation closed on October 25, but the plan has since gone on deep-freeze.

Transport Minister Simeon Brown has just confirmed that under the new Land Transport Rule, all of Christchurch’s local roads that have had their speed cut to 30kph since 2020 will have to reverse those changes. Ditto for speed reductions on arterial roads and urban connectors.

The new rule also requires variable speed limits outside schools, between 8-9.30am and 2.30-4pm on school days. But they cannot be permanent. Nor should they be. The looming rule change is a welcome win for optimising efficient traffic flow.