Push to look again at passenger rail for Christchurch
Wednesday, 16 February 2022
Commuter rail hopes for greater Christchurch could be back on track after a unanimous decision by Environment Canterbury (ECan) councillors on Wednesday.
ECan will ask the Canterbury Regional Transport Committee to form a working group to “investigate opportunities to progress passenger rail in Canterbury”, focussing on the greater city area.
The committee, comprising Canterbury mayors plus representatives from ECan and Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency, will consider ECan’s recommendation at its Thursday meeting.
ECan councillor Peter Scott said there was “significant public support” for rail transport using the existing rail network in Canterbury and the wider South Island.
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He envisaged it running from the city to Rolleston and as far north as Amberley to start with.
Scott pointed to a January Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) report warning New Zealand must do more to meet emission targets. The report said tree planting and carbon credits were not enough.
He said with transport responsible for a large share of emissions, considering rail was an opportunity to address the problem.
Any investigations made by a working group would follow on from previous business cases done by the committee, he said.
“We need to get people on other methods of transport than cars, that’s at the heart of this.
“But there’s a lot of logistics involved. People need to get to and from a rail service – how would they travel that first k [kilometre] and that last k?”
A draft business case prepared for ECan two years ago calculated establishing a passenger rail service would cost $41m, including $10m for a new central Christchurch station and tourist hub. Annual operating costs were projected to be about $5m.
Scott said the committee was the right place to investigate passenger rail because it included the mayors as well as Waka Kotahi, which has input into national rail funding decisions.
The recommendation would also include bringing other mayors into the discussion, in the form of the South Island Regional transport Committee chairs group.
Most rail services in the South Island transport freight only, with the exception of scenic tourist trips. Auckland and Wellington are the only New Zealand cities with commuter rail.
The Labour Party promised commuter rail “within a few years” to Rolleston during the 2017 election campaign, and before the 2020 election Christchurch MP Megan Woods said she wanted shovels in the ground this term.
Scott said investigating passenger rail services did not preclude any light rail options in future.
In May last year Transport Minister Michael Wood said the Government was keen to get rapid transit, in the form of light rail or bus corridors, moving in Christchurch.
“It’s one of our largest cities with a strong growth trajectory, and we want to make sure that we’ve got the public transport infrastructure to make sure that people aren’t car dependent in that city,” Wood said at the time.
A 2021 consultant’s report on rapid transit linking central Christchurch city to Rangiora and Rolleston concluded that it would not be feasible until more people lived and worked near the system. That report looked at the costs of running either heavy rail on tracks, or light rail or buses on busways.
Estimated costs for a regular peak-hour rapid transit service ranged from $2 billion to $4.4b.
Scott said the topic of passenger rail for the greater Christchurch area kept coming up in the region.
“People want us to push forward on it. We just want people to know we are prepared to be having the discussion.
“We don’t know if we can go ahead with passenger rail, the committee had the final way on how we move forward.”