Pages Rd bridge: Christchurch council considering second attempt at fast-track list

Tuesday, 6 May 2025

Taking another shot at using the Government’s fast-track legislation to replace the old Pages Rd bridge should happen sooner rather than later, a Christchurch City councillor says.

Cr Celeste Donovan is backed by colleagues, but it remains unclear when the council will do so, and a local MP is sceptical the “lifeline” bridge project will be approved a second time round.

“The coalition government said the fast track legislation would be vital to ensure infrastructure projects which need to happen could happen,” Labour’s Reuben Davidson, MP for Christchurch East, said. The fact that the Pages Rd bridge hasn’t qualified but a whole lot of other things have suggest that that’s not what it’s intended for.

“I can’t see how it [the project] can be lacking anything.”

Without being on the fast-track list, the time line for replacing the earthquake-damaged Pages Rd bridge - an important escape route for thousands of New Brighton residents during emergencies - is not expected to meet a 2028 deadline suggested by independent experts.

Council staff told the Government last year it would take until September 2029, but speeding up the consent process could shave off nine months.

The application was unsuccessful, but the Government reopened the process to another round of applications in February.

Coastal Ward councillor Celeste Donovan said it was unclear why the council had not yet reapplied for fast-tracking or what it was doing about it.

“Just to say ‘well, we’ll wait and see’ seems at odds with the urgency of the project,” she said.

“I have repeatedly asked about what we should be looking at in terms of strengthening the bridge [in the meantime] … if the bridge was to fail, not only do you lose a key route out of the area, you also lose services.”

Donovan raised the subject at the council’s finance and performance committee meeting last Wednesday. Lynette Ellis, the council’s head of transport, said the project’s business case was about to be finalised and would be submitted to the NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) by early June.

Ellis said staff were considering resubmitting, but no decision had been made.

She said there was no time limit on when projects could be submitted, and it should be noted that consents could not be applied for until several other steps had been completed.

The most recent six monthly inspection of the bridge, in January, showed no critical structural defects requiring immediate repairs nor significant changes from the previous inspection, she said.

Donovan speculated that council staff may prefer to wait until the business case was completed, but she argued it could not hurt to start the fast-track process now to avoid further delays.

The matter was not discussed at length in the Wednesday meeting, but committee chairperson Sam MacDonald agreed with Donovan.

“I think there’d be an appetite to use fast-track, so we should,” the city councillor said.

Infrastructure Minister Chris Bishop said the business case did not need to be finalised before applying to the fast-track process, but NZTA advised waiting could be advantageous.

He said the project did not make the initial fast-track list because there had been “an unprecedented” amount of interest in the process and not every project could be tackled right away.

It was not a reflection of the project’s quality, nor a sign it would be unsuccessful in future, he said.