The $3b plan to stop Canterbury being isolated by bridge failures

Saturday, 21 February 2026

Canterbury’s ageing bridges and culverts could be rolled into a multi-decade upgrade programme backed by a proposed regional infrastructure fund of up to $3 billion, paid for in part by asset sales and targeted rates.

A proposal released by industry group Infrastructure New Zealand and law firm Simpson Grierson argues that bridges and culverts should be treated as Canterbury’s “critical priority”, rather than just another line in council maintenance budgets.

The report, presented to the Canterbury Mayoral Forum on Friday, has been prepared as input to regional spatial planning work and a potential regional deal with the Government.

The authors say the goal is to shift from one-off, project-by-project decisions to a coordinated long-term programme of upgrades tied to a clear regional plan.

Infrastructure New Zealand chief executive Nick Leggett said there was now “managed decline” across many of those structures. “There’s a climate risk, there’s an ageing and a lack of maintenance risk, and those lifelines keep Canterbury connected,” he said.

A $3b fund and a small district’s big bill

To pay for this and other assets, the authors propose a Canterbury Regional Infrastructure Fund, or CRIF, with a target size of up to $3b by 2030. The fund would support a rolling 30-year pipeline of work, starting with bridges and culverts but potentially extending to other critical infrastructure.

The scale of the job is clear in Hurunui district, where about 280 bridges carry 1500 kilometres of local roads. Their replacement value is put at about $400 million, and roughly 100 will need to be replaced within 30 years.

To keep up with that job, the district would need to spend about $4.75m a year on bridge renewals. Current funding is about $200,000 a year. Closing that gap through rates alone would mean lifting roading rates by about 60% – a hit the council says would be unrealistic for a small rating base.

The paper calls for Canterbury to embrace “asset recycling” – selling or partially selling existing revenue-generating assets, then ring-fencing the proceeds for new infrastructure – alongside targeted rates in growth areas, user charges and public-private partnerships.

Asset recycling, targeted rates and new charges

Targeted rates would mean charging extra on properties in the areas that get new or stronger roads and bridges, and putting that money into the CRIF. User-pays options floated in the paper include tolls, heavy-vehicle charges or visitor levies on particular corridors where benefits are clear and alternatives exist.

Leggett said he understood many people did not want assets sold or new charges added, but argued the current settings would not deliver everything communities expected.

“If you want to keep the bridge that you drive on, the road that you drive on, the bus that you catch, the school that your kids go to – and keep those things at the standard you’ve got now or better – we just have to have a different way of approaching how we deliver some of them,” he said.

Floods, Ashburton and the push for backup routes

The report’s authors say recent floods underline the risk of relying on single, ageing crossings over major braided rivers. When heavy rain shuts a bridge, they argue, it can cut off whole communities, disrupt freight and force emergency services onto long detours, a pattern Canterbury saw again this week.

Those risks are already familiar in Ashburton, where the State Highway 1 bridge has had to close twice in recent years because of flooding, briefly cutting the South Island in two. Work is now progressing on a second urban bridge over the Ashburton/Hakatere River and is due to open late next year.

The authors say every major infrastructure decision now has to assume more frequent flooding, more extreme weather and more disruption than the past. Building in extra capacity and backup routes is no longer a “nice to have”, they argue, but insurance so that one damaged bridge does not shut a whole district.

Leggett said the cost of not acting would outweigh the cost of a planned upgrade programme. Asked whether the cost of not doing something could be higher than doing it, he replied: “Unquestionably.”

National plan, local decisions

It lands as the New Zealand Infrastructure Commission has released its national plan warning that the country has “lots of projects, not enough money”, and urging a wider mix of funding and financing tools to spread the cost of long-life assets and ease pressure on general rates and taxes.

Leggett said that assessment applied as much in Canterbury as anywhere else. “We have to think outside the box,” he said. “The status quo for delivery and funding isn’t going to give us what Canterbury or New Zealand requires.”

Canterbury’s paper echoes that language, arguing that a dedicated regional fund would move the region away from “just-in-time” projects and towards a more predictable, affordable programme of renewals.

For now, the report is a discussion document rather than a funding decision. Its recommendations will feed into the Canterbury Mayoral Forum’s work on a regional spatial plan and into talks with ministers about a potential regional deal.

The paper suggests the CRIF would be overseen by a regional infrastructure coordination group bringing together councils, Ngāi Tahu, central government agencies and major infrastructure providers.

The work is part of a wider regional push that includes the recently released Canterbury Ambition project, led by Business Canterbury and backed by the Mayoral Forum, which sets out a wider regional vision for growth and highlights infrastructure and connectivity as central to Canterbury’s future.