Northern Motorway, bypass stand to be first toll road in South Island

Friday, 5 July 2024

Minister of Transport Simeon Brown makes an announcement about the SH1 Belfast Woodend Bypass which has been made a Road of National Significance.

Work will start on a long awaited extension to the Northern Motorway and a bypass for Woodend in the first tranche of Roads of National Significance projects, Minister of Transport Simeon Brown on Friday.

The motorway was named as one of seven (of 17) Roads of National Significance (RoNS) projects to get under way within the next three years.

Last month, Infrastructure Minister Chris Bishop said all Roads of National Significance would be toll roads. He later wound back the comments, telling a select committee it was not necessarily a blanket policy.

“We have got an expectation they will be considered for tolling. We are not going to toll them if it doesn’t make sense to toll them,” Bishop said.

Minister of Transport Simeon Brown, seen here with Associate Minister of Transport and Waimakariri MP Matt Doocey, visited North Canterbury on Friday to announce work on the SH1 Belfast Pegasus Motorway would get underway in the next three years.

The RoNS roading campaign, a rehash of the Key government’s programme of the same name, underscored the need for fast-track legislation, to ensure “a pipeline of consented infrastructure projects,” Brown said.

The Belfast to Pegasus Motorway is one of only two Roads of National Significance in the South Island (the other is the Hope Bypass in Nelson).

The extension of the Christchurch Northern Motorway, will provide four lanes of grade separated motorway over a 9km length of SH1 from around Lineside Rd to Pegasus, a planned township created in 2016, now home to more than 4000 people.

Minister of Transport Simeon Brown announced “procurement, enabling works and construction” would begin on seven phase 1 Roads of National Significance,including the Belfast to Pegasus Motorway, within three years.

The Woodend bypass has been talked about for decades, and was confirmed as going ahead in 2013 with a 10 year timeframe before later stalling. More than 20,000 vehicles pass through the township each day.

In June, the Canterbury Land Transport Committee and regional council Environment Canterbury signed off on retrospective changes to the 2024-34 Canterbury Regional Land Transport Plan just days before it would have come into effect.

The changes included a $90m decrease for the Woodend bypass, as well as a $330m deduction in safety improvements for the region’s state highways.

Waimakariri MP Matt Doocey at a rally staged in 2020 at Woodend's Owen Stalker Park, calling for a bypass to take SH1 around the town (File photo)

At the time, Waimakariri mayor Dan Gordon said he understood the reduced budget related to NZTA’s work to “better understand and determine the total costs associated with delivering this project”.

“What’s important to our residents is that safety improvements along this stretch of road, and building of the Woodend Bypass, go ahead as both are desperately needed as the community here grows,” Gordon said.

The revised amount “simply reflect[s] an update”, not “a change in scope”, NZTA director regional relationships James Caygill said.

A NZTA request for tender for a “scheme design review” of the scope and cost of the design, specifically focused on possible “refinements”, including a change from a roundabout to “grade separation” (which can include under or overpasses) at Pegasus, realignment of the route at Williams Street near the Cam River, and of the motorway tie in at the Lineside Rd on - off ramps.

On Friday, an NZTA spokesperson said it hoped to have a better idea of the potential cost of the road by the end of this year.