Cambridge wants a new bridge, but has different ideas on where it should go

Thursday, 2 April 2026

Cambridge locals want a new bridge to help ease congestion in the town - but residents have different ideas about where it should go and the mayor is already asking if one will be enough.

Bridge crossings were the top-ranked theme to emerge from Waipā District Council’s public brainstorm on how to solve Cambridge’s Transport problems, making up 14.7% of total ideas.

In total, the council received 578 pieces of feedback from community engagement totalling over 1000 transport ideas. The ideas were developed into a long list which was tabled at this week’s Strategic Planning and Policy committee.

A report to elected members stated that most responses in that category were calling for a new river crossing.

However there were a wide range of ideas about where a new bridge should be situated, with the east, mid west, and far west all being cited as potential locations.

Executive director Katie Mayes told councillors it reflected the range of different locations which had been suggested.

She added other responders had suggested that the town’s existing bridges could be strengthened by making them wider, changing the layout, or different traffic operations.

“What we really need to do is when we model all of those options across the whole network is understand which of those sorts of places … actually will deliver the responses that we need to address the problems that we’ve identified.”

Mayor Mike Pettit asked whether building one new bridge would be sufficient as the township grew.

He said Hamilton had six or seven bridges to service a population of about 190,000 people - roughly one bridge per 25,000 residents.

“We're not looking at building this for quite some years, with our growth projections in and around the Cambridge and Waipā area.

“Is it an opportunity now to be looking, you said a third site, but looking at our fourth site already?”

Executive director Katie Mayes replied while it was not something the council needed to be considering right now, it was something to be conscious of going forward.

Community reference group co-chair Chris Flatt acknowledged it was difficult to make decisions on new infrastructure when it was not known what development would happen in the future, describing it as a “crystal ball exercise”.

Councillors needed to be “as cognizant as possible that there are fourth and fifth potential options required” and ensure that any decision making did not preclude these options, he said.

Councillor Pip Kempthorne said that “rightly or wrongly”, the previous iteration of the Cambridge Connections project was where a third bridge should go.

This was before the project was reset in early 2025 following complaints that the community was not adequately consulted during the plan’s development.

Kempthorne said looking at the report, a new bridge seemed “way down the pecking order”, with the focus on what could be done to ease congestion between now and 2040.

He asked whether it was recognition that while a decision would be made on the bridge, the town would “have to use what we’ve got effectively” in the short term.

Mayes said the council was looking to make use of what they had first before building new infrastructure.

“We've certainly set out the timeline of the steps that are needed to get to a new bridge, and so even then there would be absolutely a need to think about what are the short-term and the medium-term steps that we need to take before we get there.”

Elected members voted unanimously to endorse the long list of transport ideas and to approve transport assessment criteria, subject to adding a supply measure for parking.

The project will now move to the next step, where transport ideas will be assessed and transport options developed.

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