Councils sign off funding for major Christchurch bus plan - now it's Govt's turn

Friday, 9 July 2021

Light rail was promised for Christchurch in 2017, so where is it? (Video first published in November 2020)

Work on a multimillion-dollar plan to improve the uncompetitive and unreliable bus network of Greater Christchurch will begin once the Government decides whether to subsidise half the cost for the next three years.

Councils representing Christchurch, Selwyn, Waimakariri and the wider Canterbury region committed to funding the upgrade as part of their recently finalised 10-year budgets, known formally as long-term plans.

Their draft $115 million transport plan was released in December last year, and proposed up to 100 extra buses for the region and 22 kilometres of new bus lanes.

The plan they endorsed later reduced the cost to $108m, Environment Canterbury (ECan) said this week.

* Two years of free bus rides proposed for Christchurch

* Multimillion-dollar boost proposed for public transport in Nelson-Tasman

Under the multimillion-dollar plan, buses on the five main routes will run every 7.5 minutes during the weekdays.

* $115m plan proposes Christchurch buses so frequent you just 'turn up and go'

Canterbury's buses are undergoing a rebrand to this teal livery.

Once implemented, which would take at least the next decade, Christchurch’s five main bus routes would have a “turn-up-and-go” model, where a bus arrived every 7.5 minutes between 7am and 7pm on weekdays. Presently, the main routes had a 10 or 15-minute frequency.

Most of the project would be funded by the Christchurch City Council. It recently approved $71m towards the plan in its 10-year budget.

Of this, $59m would be used for bus lanes and intersection improvements, $8m would go towards bus stop upgrades, and $4m was set aside to improve the central city interchange.

Waimakariri District Council mayor Dan Gordon hopes his council's bids for Waka Kotahi funding are successful.

Up to 51 per cent of costs for the plan could be absorbed by the Government through the National Land Transport Programme.

This is administered by Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency.

Waka Kotahi system design regional manager Richard Osborne said projects seeking funding over the next three years would be considered by the agency’s board in August and confirmed in September.

A 2018 concept of what Lincoln Rd may look like with a dedicated bus lane.

Waimakariri mayor Dan Gordon said his council went through an extensive process to prepare its bids for funding. “Hopefully they survive, but we are told, being realistic, that Waka Kotahi is under pressure,” he said.

Waka Kotahi had acknowledged that, in some cases, funding would be lower than promised.

Osborne said once the funding was allocated by Waka Kotahi, councils would refine costs for specific projects within the $108m plan.

“They've got a number on their books, but they need to kind of design that up, they need to consult on that, that needs to be approved,” he said.

The $108m bus plan proposed adding dedicated bus lanes to the routes of the five main services.

Some main routes had partial bus lanes already, while planning work was ongoing to add a bus lane to Lincoln Rd, used by the number seven line. This project was announced before the $108m plan was finalised.

The Christchurch City Council’s acting head of transport, Lynette Ellis, said the project was at the design and “pre-implementation” phase.

The number 17 and 28 routes would also get bus shelter upgrades at some stage in the next 12 months, to align with plans from ECan, which operates the buses, to increase frequencies on these routes.

An ECan spokeswoman said the council had set aside $7.2m over the next three years to increase bus frequencies.

This number does not include the cost of operating the existing network.

The $108m plan was part of a wider effort to improve public transport in Greater Christchurch.

The next piece of work for public transport related to the development of a mass rapid transport option, potentially light rail.

An interim report released last month found more people would need to live and work near transport routes to make the system work and the cost would be in the billions of dollars.

On Friday, representatives of the councils from Greater Christchurch met formally and decided to push ahead with planning work on massive rapid transport.