Waipā councillors set out key Cambridge traffic problems

Thursday, 4 December 2025

Cambridge’s bridges were one of the problems agreed on by Waipā District councillors.

The traffic in Cambridge is an oft-cited bugbear and councillors have now laid out three key problems to focus on.

It’s part of the controversial Cambridge Connections project, which aims to create a 30-year-plan addressing transport pressures in the rapidly-growing township. This is a second go, as the the project got a reset after a heated meeting and community backlash over a preferred location for a third bridge in the town in 2024.

At a Strategic Planning and Policy committee meeting on Wednesday, chaired by Mike Montgomerie, councillors settled on three “problem statements”.

One is about the impact of high growth on Cambridge’s transport networks, another about through traffic - including freight vehicles - using residential areas and the town centre, and the last notes that the the town’s bridges are ageing and have limited capacity.

‘We are here now - we are the decision makers,’ said Councillor Mike Montgomerie, who chaired the Strategic Planning and Policy committee meeting.

Councillors voted unanimously to approve all three.

That means the council can now move to the next phase of the project and start to long-list potential solutions.

According to Waipā District Council executive director Katie Mayes, who joined in May as part of the project’s reset, there would also be further public engagement in February and March next year.

Traffic passing through the town centre to get to other places was another problem that councillors noted.

But the project’s controversial past has lingered. During committee discussions, councillor Pip Kempthorne said while he congratulated Mayes for taking a wider approach to the issue, he had concerns past mistakes were being repeated.

“It still leaves a feeling that for the Cambridge community that ultimately we’re patching up real problems that never should have existed”, Kempthorne said.

But it was a sentiment Montgomerie said it was time to “put to bed now”.

“The reset on this project is absolutely real and it’s significant. There’s a total change of governance and staff leading this project.”

“I’d like to acknowledge your perspective on what went before but I’d like to rule a line under that because we are here now - we are the decision makers,” he told Kempthorne.

Kempthorne said there was a lot of “anger and frustration” felt by the Cambridge community from the project’s early stages, and “we have to double our efforts to ensure that people feel heard”.

Montgomerie responded “you have to understand your history to be able to learn from it and be able to advance. For me, the line is drawn, I think everyone understands the history”.

More information about the project is available on the council’s Cambridge Connections web page.