Plan needs ambition, public say

Cantabrians are calling for more frequent – and faster – public transport options, but they are no closer to knowing when these will come.

Residents from across the region told the Canterbury Regional Transport Committee yesterday to be more ambitious with its proposed regional land transport plan.

However, nearly half of the proposed $10.8 billion plan (which spans a decade worth of transport projects, including maintenance work, safety improvements, and ways to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions) relies on funding from central government, which may not eventuate.

Popular projects discussed yesterday included public transport, the second Ashburton bridge, and improving the Pages Rd bridge to New Brighton.

Mark Alexander, from the Rolleston Residents Association, argued for more public transport options in the district.

He said getting Selwyn residents on to buses offered “a much bigger bang for your buck” in terms of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. “You’d have to make four journeys [within Christchurch city] to match my journey from Rolleston on the bus,” he said.

Christchurch resident Tim Frank, echoing the comments of dozens of written submitters, said public transport needed to be faster and more reliable than it currently was, but he also called on the committee to consider passenger rail.

In a submission presented jointly by Liz McMillan, deputy mayor of Ashburton, and Hamish Riach, chief executive of the Ashburton council, the committee heard how the South Island desperately needed a second bridge across the Ashburton/Hakatere river.

McMillan said the bridge was likely to close more often in future as flooding events became more frequent.

Riach wanted the new bridge to remain a top priority for the regional committee. He said although the Government understood the importance of the project, and had already pledged to begin work by 2027, its recent Government Policy Statement (GPS) on Land Transport had listed the bridge as a road of regional significance project, as opposed to national significance.

He was concerned what the change in description could mean for funding, and wanted the committee to emphasise to the Government that it should be paid for by the Crown.

Christchurch councillors Celeste Donovan and Aaron Keown presented the city council’s submission to the plan, which urged the committee to rank the Pages Rd bridge upgrade as its number one priority.

Keown said there was evidence backing a 26% risk of a magnitude 8 or higher earthquake off the coast of Canterbury in the next 50 years, which would trigger a tsunami that would hit New Brighton.

However, the Pages Rd bridge was the main way in or out for New Brighton’s several thousand residents.

Donovan described the bridge as “a key lifeline route”, but said it would not be strong enough to handle an urgent evacuation of that scale, and residents would only have an hour’s warning.

The elephant in the room yesterday was the Government’s draft $20b GPS, which was released two weeks earlier and earmarks funding for only two South Island roads of national significance projects.

By comparison, it proposes 13 projects in the North Island. Only Auckland and the lower North Island are listed as areas that will get rapid transit (in the form of light rail) funded.

Although the future of mass rapid transit in Greater Christchurch was not discussed in detail yesterday, it is considered crucial to the success of the Greater Christchurch Spatial Plan, which the Christchurch City Council approved on March 6.

The final regional land transport plan will be agreed on following deliberations on March 28. From there, project priorities and associated funding requests will be raised with the relevant ministers and officials.