Short-sighted decisions shadow Christchurch public transport

Saturday, 23 August 2025

The Christchurch Railway Station in Addington is for tourists, not residents.

ANALYSIS: Decisions about roads and railways that made sense in the late 1980s and early 1990s continue to cast a shadow over public transport in the city.

A result is that Christchurch does not have public transport based on a railway, while Wellington and Auckland do.

If that’s too strong, then the decisions made rail-based public transport much more difficult in Christchurch, observers say.

The Christchurch Railway Station on Moorhouse Ave in 1991. It became Science Alive! and was demolished after the quakes.

One decision was moving the train station from Moorhouse Ave to Addington.

A second was creating “the gap” in the tracks that makes it hard to get passengers from North Canterbury and the northern suburbs to Moorhouse Ave and potentially the Square.

Both arose from the walloping changes to NZ rail that started with the Fourth Labour Government in the 1980s.

The upheavals saw NZ rail restructured, downsized, privatised, nationalised and often renamed. We’ll call all the entities KiwiRail in this article for convenience.

KiwiRail had massive yards in Addington - the current site of the Tower Junction shopping complex and nearby areas - and these were deemed surplus. So was the mighty train station on Moorhouse Ave. Both went.

A new and more modest train station was built at Tower Junction.

It is “sub-optimal” for public transport, said Environment Canterbury councillor Joe Davies.

ECan councillor Joe Davies has been studying public transport in Christchurch for years.

He has been planning and lobbying for mass public transport for years and re-visited the Addington station recently.

“It’s like it's been mothballed. It needs investment … it's not part of our city … it’s niche,” he said.

It is used mainly by well-heeled tourists on great rail journeys over the Alps or along the Pacific coast between Picton and Christchurch.

As a commuter station for Canterbury residents heading to and from the central city, the university or elsewhere, it is in the wrong place and inconvenient. Passengers need another form of transport to complete their journeys.

Wellington region has a rail-based commuter system.

In the same period, KiwiRail reoriented its tracks at Addington. Coming from the north alongside Hagley Park, the tracks had always swept east towards Moorhouse Ave and Lyttelton.

The reorientation made them sweep west towards Arthur’s Pass and points south.

That meant a passenger or public transport train coming from North Canterbury or the northern suburbs could not turn east to drop off passengers on Moorhouse Ave close to the central city and soon Te Kaha stadium.

This is “the gap”.

The Christchurch City Council had an opportunity to plan for tracks making an east turn in the 1990s, said traffic consultant Axel Downard-Wilke.

He was working for the council when the Blenheim Rd diversion was planned.

Traffic consultant Axel Downard-Wilke tried to plan for the gap.

This is the sweeping bridge over the train tracks that connects Moorhouse Ave and Blenheim Rd and sits between Bunnings Warehouse Riccarton and the Blood Donor Centre.

If that bridge had been designed slightly differently, Downard-Wilke said, there would have been room for an east sweeping turn that could be used by public transport one day - closing the gap.

Not that the council would necessarily build it, but there would be room.

Management, however, was only interested in delivering the Blenheim Rd diversion on time and on budget and the opportunity was lost, Downard-Wilke said.

The land in question was bought by Ngāi Tahu and was until recently the Turners car auction site.

It may be that public transport on KiwiRail tracks would never work - as the Greater Christchurch Partnership thinks - but finding out is hard.

One rail enthusiast called the long ago decisions “short sighted”.

The Moorhouse station became Science Alive!, a cinema and office building. It was demolished after the earthquakes and a petrol station, car dealerships and other structures built on the land.

There is arguably room for a new public transport station on Moorhouse near Colombo St on land used by used car dealers and parking.

Mainland Rail wants a platform there for its planned Events Express train service for matches and occasions at Te Kaha and Hagley Park.

It wants to bring fans into the city from Rangiora (and Rolleston) and the gap is not closed.

It apparently will shunt the northern trains at the Middleton, which is where KiwiRail handles Picton trains.