This is a guest post by Brendon Harre. It’s the first part of a post about Christchurch, it’s history, and what needs to change to fix it’s transport woes and and this part has been published on Brendon’s medium.
Christchurch’s roads are getting slower, over a period of a year or two, this is relatively insignificant. Journeys might take only be a few seconds longer. Over five to ten years these seconds could add up to three or more four minutes and the issue starts to become serious. Over twenty or thirty years if nothing is done then congestion will be devastating for Christchurch.
Ironically the reason this is happening is Christchurch has been a success. Greater Christchurch is the nation’s second largest urban agglomeration, with over ½ million people.
Canterbury the region that contains Christchurch has grown faster than the national average despite challenges like Christchurch’s 2011 earthquake. Selwyn the western district of Greater Christchurch is consistently one of fastest growing districts in the country. Canterbury this century will be a region of over a million people and Greater Christchurch will exceed ¾ of million. Canterbury if it continues to grow at the nation’s population growth rate of 1.5% will have more than 1 million people by 2050 and over 800,000 people living in the Greater Christchurch area.
Canterbury is the nation’s second largest regional economy, having recently overtaken the Wellington region. Canterbury has New Zealand’s second largest residential and commercial construction industry. It is this industry and its ability to build quickly that has contained house and rent price increases, meaning many New Zealanders move to Christchurch to live, study, and work for housing affordability reasons.
Canterbury University with its nearly 25,000 students is New Zealand’s third largest tertiary institution (the first two are in Auckland).
Many services in Christchurch have a scale and expertise that is not seen elsewhere in New Zealand except for Auckland. For instance, Christchurch Public Hospital is one of the busiest in the country, its ED department sees more patients in a day than any other hospital in the country.
Christchurch is comparable to Chicago in the sense that if you want to live, work, do business, or study in a large New Zealand city that is neither the capital city nor the nation’s largest city then Christchurch is a good option.
People who study cities agree that larger cities have greater productivity and higher incomes, because firms can take advantage of greater economies of scale, there is more innovation and knowledge spillover between firms, there is better matching between work skills and labour requirements, and there is more capacity to supply specialisation in manufacturing production, retail outlets, public and private services, and even recreational activities. Larger cities have better network effects, such as, a better online dating scene.
As cities grow, they also experience higher land rents, more crowding, worse traffic congestion, city residents are more likely to experience bad social behaviours like crime, and these residents are often subjected to poor environment characteristics like higher particulate pollution or excessive noise.
Given these positive and negative factors people and firms find their preferred place in a nation’s hierarchy of towns and cities. Typically, urban communities make up the bulk of a nation’s population. The world over is trending towards over 80% living in urban environments. For over a century this has certainly been true in New Zealand.
Urbanist evidence also indicates on average the different urban areas of a country grow at the similar rate. Greater Christchurch is likely to continue to grow at the same pace as the other fast-growing urban areas of New Zealand, which is primarily the golden triangle between Auckland, Hamilton, and Tauranga.
About 1 in 10 New Zealanders have chosen to live in Greater Christchurch because of the opportunities it provides. Going forward this ratio is likely to remain constant.
Underpinning Christchurch’s success is two important factors. It has good housing affordability relative to other New Zealand cities, and it has a city road network that has few geographic bottlenecks, meaning travelling around Christchurch historically has been relatively hassle free.
Unfortunately, the ease of city travel factor may no longer be a comparative advantage. This is not surprising. Arterial roads, intersections, and on-street parking have capacity limits. Motorways have larger limits, but even if they are free flowing, they tend to move congestion bottlenecks around a city rather than eliminate them. In any case, once road capacity and parking limits are exceeded then congestion and slower driving is the result. Christchurch like all population growth cities is experiencing a congestion headwind.
The response around the world has been to construct additional more spatially efficient transport networks that are separate to the congested road network. Mass transit in the form of subways, elevated metros, surface passenger rail, on-street light rail and BRT networks are amongst the different options. This expands capacity on a city’s most useful transport corridors. Provision for walking, cycling, and micromobility can also improve urban connectivity, as can upzoning that allows businesses, services, and higher density housing to be co-located.
Cities in general can afford to fund these upgrades when they require them because as they get larger, greater productivity, higher incomes, and higher land rents mean there are funding sources available. Congestion and parking charges can also be used as funding options. This assumes the urban agglomeration has an effective ‘collective’ organisation with the correct infrastructure funding tools so they can keep pace with their expanding population by implementing upgrades in a timely manner.
This theory of urban development is relatively straightforward. If the reader would like to dig deeper, then books like “Order without Design – How Markets Shape Cities” by Alain Bertaud and “Triumph of the City” by Edward Glaeser are great resources. Unfortunately, the practice of urban development in New Zealand’s towns and cities would be better described as complex, messy, and not straight forward.
Christchurch has completed a preliminary MRT study of light rail (modern tram) that in phase one would connect Riccarton to the city centre and out to Papanui. The detailed business case is tied up in stop/start politics and currently there is no implementation timetable. The Canterbury Regional Council is looking at funding a business case for a Rolleston to Rangiora passenger rail service using the existing rail corridor.
To understand which if not both transit options would be preferable and the possible timetable for progressing a transit system it is necessary to do a deep dive into Christchurch’s spatial planning history…
Stay tuned for the next of Brendon’s guest posts.
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Unfortunately there is a lot more congestion needed before public transport is quicker than driving. For example my bus which is on a frequent main route (25) with bus lanes most of its length takes 30 minutes to travel 8km. Then I have to walk to/from the bus and wait for it to turn up. All up it takes about 100% longer to bus than drive.
Maybe a train would be time competitive with driving, but there are very few areas in NZ that have the density needed to invest in new rail. I assume this is particularly true in ChCh where building heights are restricted.
While I think there are some very good reasons to invest in PT such as offering people alternatives, its hard to conclude that it will allow us to get around quicker or make us more productive.
I’m not sure where you live but buses are quicker than cars for some trips at some times. For example a quick google check shows travelling from Ilam into the city centre at peak times is faster by bus than car. This would be true of most of Christchurch’s tram suburbs if we just painted a few more bus lanes down the key bus corridors.
My Bus from Birkenhead Ave to City is at least 25% quicker than driving simply because of frequency and bus lane vs single lane traffic on Onewa Road, and thats just time..the other benefits (price, stress etc) weigh even heavier to PT.
Congestion is not just a problem of travel time it also is a problem with car parking. The car parking buildings around Christchruch hospital charge $25 a day, for instance.
I am sure though Christchurch could construct a metro system where journeys along this system is as fast as driving in non peak times and faster at peak.
Is there a way for PT to be much faster on the route of the 25? We may have some ideas. Meanwhile – get an e-bike and beat the car ride time. Christchurch has tackled the car vs. bike trips within the city, but clearly needs PT alternative for more distant areas.
You need a Central Rail Link, or some iteration of rail. Roads will only ever produce more traffic, that has been proven for the past eighty years.
Massive infrastructure but if Ōtautahi truly has half a million residents, and growing, then there is populational justification for a good metro rail system.
Otherwise just move up here to Taamaki, it is a bit warmer and we will build some apartments soon, so much better living conditions.
My own father was born here in the north, but grew up in Christchurch, and returned to Auckland as a young man, never to entertain the idea of southern living again. I am particularly sensitive to the cold so might be better suited for Kaitaia, but not without a train, as that is another of my sensitivities. Matariki was tough with no trains, empty train stations are ghostly, haunting pieces of architecture!
bah humbug
Christchurch with modern insulated and double glazed housing is fantastic compared to my childhood. Winter is not particularly harsh. We have a lot of sunny days so getting outside is not difficult. But knowing you always have a warm home to retreat to is a key requirement.
Thank you GA for republishing this. 95 years ago NZR trialed a battery electric train that for 8 years went from Moorhouse Ave in Christchurch to Little River in just over an hour. That meant Lincoln was only 25 minutes from Christchruch. This is faster than you can drive and about half the travel time when the roads are congested.
Unfortunately Christchurch’s train and tram era was allowed to fade into distant history and it has become the most car dependent of NZ’s three largest cities.
An example of what congestion is doing to Greater Christchurch. I have a workmate who lives in Prebbleton which used to have a train station on the Lincoln/Little River line. Prebbleton is 15 km from Christchurch. My friend used to belong to a Hagley Park running group. It used to take her 30 minutes to drive there. Now it would take 1 hour so she doesn’t do her Hagley Park group runs anymore.
Yet 95 years ago a train journey to close to Hagley Park would only have taken her 20 minutes.
For a bit of context though, this journey was done twice a day at most, unlikely to be useful for a park-run.
Given the current population of Lincoln and Prebbleton and the land use on that line into the city I don’t think the frequencies could be massively higher than that even now.
I think light-rail is probably the best bet in Christchurch given the lack of density around the rail line to the west especially and the lack of a station sufficiently central.
The P&R catchment of the three end stations needs to be included. What are the expected journey times from P&R to city centre?
With the huge influx of people, particularly from Auckland, it is no surprise that the congestion in Christchurch will increase.
New Zealand grows the population at a huge rate via mass immigration which over runs infrastructure. NZ Herald just reported 90,000 more cars on Auckland roads last year mainly due to mass immigration. Christchurch is starting to feel the downstream effect of this flawed strategy that started with Helen Clark.
As Milton Friedmann said “you cannot have a welfare state and mass immigration” yet governments for 25 years have chosen mass immigration and the public wonders why congestion is worse, hospitals are now ramped etc
Migration has dropped dramatically in the last couple of years, so you might be in luck. However, it will bring its own problems, notably an ageing demographic and the costs that go with that.
Christchurch hospital ED looks to be in trouble. Add up the total ED patients for the Auckland hospitals and compare with the catchment populations.
Obviously Auckland being 3 times the size of Greater Christchurch has three time the amount of emergency department visits. But this spread across several hospitals, whilst Christchurch just has the one ED hospital (with all the necessary radiography, ICU and other inpatient supportive care).
I’m always a bit sceptical of Tom’s Tom’s “congestion rating” claims because you have to consider the context of each city looked at. A big part of that is how many motorways and other high-speed roads a city has, relative to normal urban streets. Auckland and Wellington for example have quite extensive networks of motorways and expressways; by contrast, Christchurch has two relatively short sections heading out north and southwest. So, surprise, surprise, the average speed across Chch is lower…
That said, as Brendan alludes to, Christchurch is also a victim of significant population growth lately (esp the likes of Halswell and Rolleston) and we’re a bit slow to keep up on managing that influx of traffic, especially when there isn’t a mass rapid transit option available. Roll on a few more bus lanes in places, but I’m glad to see that MRT for Chch has finally just been acknowledged in our National Infrastructure 30-year Plan – let’s hope it doesn’t actually take another 30 years… https://www.odt.co.nz/star-news/star-christchurch/christchurchs-mass-public-transport-plan-earns-national-nod
The question Glen wrt MRT is whether Christchurch has to wait 20 to 30 years for a system to get started. Or can something be done sooner in 5 to 10 years?
I content that if nothing is done to mitigate congestion this will be devastating.for Christchruch and will halt agglomeration (increasing population, increasing incomes, increasing productivity) that is the underlying driver of congestion.
This will be a loss for Christchurch and for NZ.
Very happy with that MRT announcement. But I do think there is a lot more we can do in the short term before we get to MRT that would make a massive difference for far lower cost. Running more buses, painting more bus lanes, sorting out shelters, ticketing, upzoning along bus routes, aligning rating structures and devleopment contributions better with costs, etc etc. I feel like delivery of that work should be the top priority right now, while keeping MRT planning progressing in parallel.
I think you are correct Glen re the lower proportion of motorway driving in Christchurch compared to Auckland and Wellington. And that probably skews the 10km travel times somewhat.
More interesting is the TomTom results show in Christchurch the time taken to drive those 10km is getting worse by 20 seconds a year, which is worse than Wellington and Auckland.
It is this worsening congestion that my article is focused on. Not the absolute travel time.
I’m a former Aucklander now calling Canterbury home. I can confirm I have met someone who has just moved from Auckland. This has been the case since 2021 at least and is accelerating. So from my own anecdotal evidence, plus social media posts seeking advice, all point that there is an ongoing influx of Aucklanders to Christchurch.
Two much bigger cultural obstacles are that firstly there is a far more Boomers demographic negativity towards any changes here than Auckland (it was worse years ago back when stuff allowed non-subscribers to post and view comments). Second, there is a cultural belief that any growth means “the New Zealand we grew up with, with the open space and half acre homes dream, is no more” type of wailings.
Also don’t discount rural Canterbury outside of Christchurch and satellite towns can be a much bigger thing than Auckland. I was told by someone when I came in the mid 2000’s that “just because Kaiapoi or Rangiora are near Christchurch, doesn’t mean we identify with it” . The rural Canterbury has a very strong rural farming, driving your own vehicles, farming, irrigation resource as their wish list for ECan. This doesn’t meld well with the public transport focus from Christchurch residents. Rangiora or Kaiapoi Lincoln, Rolleston used to identify more with rural Canterbury more than Christchurch in terms of its thinking on what the priorities should be, but it is less and less the case now.
So Christchurch/Canterbury is not just merely a second city issue, you also have to navigate the local rural-urban divide that doesn’t really exist [as much] as Auckland. Plus in general tehre is far more negativity towards any “new thinking” than Auckland in general.
Correction: not just “someone”, but “a number of people from different circles”, and not isolated examples!
I am likewise an AKL escapee boomer who now calls Christchurch home. Yes, it is more conservative. However, the ‘old money’ seems to be more evenly distributed with the ‘new money’ not so ostentatiously displayed. There is an appreciation for ‘architecture’ here and that may be a flow on from the belief that this really is a ‘Garden City’. Hagley Park, the Port Hills and the riversides are treasures and used far more than I remember Auckland’s parks being used. There is a deep love of the combustion engine in all it’s forms. With all age groups flogging their toys around the hills, roads and rivers. It’s really no wonder CHC has a boy racer problem when their parent’s generation is out in their MGB’s and old Escorts whenever the weather is fine legitimising the car as a thing of leisure. Secondly, employment is spread all over the town and PT is so dire for many that a car is a necessity for most to get to work. So, if you’re young & living at home your car is your 2nd most important possession after your phone. That said, cycle commuting is trending up and well supported with bike lanes and a flat geography. Commuter rail does have appeal and the right of ways exist so that’s a good start. Once the existing lines are double tracked and electrified the big issue will become grade separating the many existing crossings. I count 20 between Tower Junction and the WaiMak going north to Rangiora. That’s a challenge so I’m a supporter of starting with more bus priority and bus frequency along with more grade separated cycleways for Christchurch. At the same time CRC should continue to work on the Rangiora to Rolleston rail corridor.
That’s a good observation, boy racers are much more visible than in Auckland.
I worry a bit about the prospects for doubletracking. Can Kiwirail obtain all the necessary easements? Second, can we move the Christchurch Central train station back to within the Four Avenues (ideally at the bus exchange or EntX).
i think Brendon had the suggestion of a Britomart-style branch leading to an underground station near the bus interchange?
while the long-listed heavy rail studied for the recent mass transit thing involved a complete city rail link style tunnel from Riccarton under Hagley Park and the central city to Waltham
If the City Rail Link was close to impossible to pull it off even for Auckland, this proposal will face infinitely more resistance based on costs alone and Christchurch being a “glorified town with only a few hundreds thousands population” in popular imagination. I don’t see how we can pull this off barring:
1. A complete cultural change in New Zealand where people become much more positively inclined towards spending money on public transport; and/or
2. Canterbury’s population goes past 1.25 million (and Christchurch CC area goes above 1 million)
I did promote an underground route from Moorhouse Ave to the central bus station (and have considered an elevated route because there are no high value buildings blocking the elevated option. And one day that might happen.
But since the MRT study came out I have been supporting a combined system of metro style trains on the existing rail corridors and on-street light rail largely following the MRT stage one route except I advocate for the Riccarton end to go to the University not Church Corner.
In this configuration the main train station would be between Riccarton and Kilmarnock streets. This would be because it intersects with the light rail/BRT corridor that would service the University, Riccarton Mall, the Riccarton train station, the main hospital, and the city centre.
I think it makes sense to me to deliver the Rolleston to Rangiora train corridor first and upgrade the intersecting bus corridors – especially the Riccarton Road line.
Then when additional capacity is needed upgrade the bus corridors to light rail.
I do wonder if CRC would be better off starting with commuter rail from Heathcote thru to Waterloo Road. This line is mostly grade separated, it’s already double tracked and it runs through many of CHC’s industrial areas and just south of Moorhouse Ave at the bottom end of the CBD. It just doesn’t go through many residential areas. Electrification and platforms would be the biggest expense but a great stage one. Stage two could be working out how to get through the rail tunnels to Lyttelton to service the port and cruise passengers in particular. Stage three extends north or south to Rangiora &/or Rolleston.
A shorter lower cost first step like this would be much easier to kick off a CHC metro system than starting with what would be the biggest win – Rangiora to Rolleston.
Maybe. Then once the northern line is upgraded there could be two lines, perhaps Heathcote (and eventually Lyttelton) to Rangiora for the first service and Rolleston to Belfast or Kaiapoi for the second. If the Lincoln line was rebuilt there would need to be a third configuration.
In Chch in the sixties train was the option for people from Kaiapoi to go to high school, mainly Papanui. Changed when Kaiapoi high opened. My rellies tell me the congestion on Lineside road through to Kaiapoi and across the twin bridges is pretty bad- and yet much of the infrastructure for commuter trains on that line is still there in some form.
It has been particularly bad since the 2011 earthquakes. I know people at one point had spent 90 minutes commuting from Rangiora to town one way in the morning. That was before the CNC opened but from what I see (I commute the other way round for work, and still see the motorway and St Albans just jam packed each day) it hasn’t been that much better.
if the Woodend bypass gets shoved through, imo there should be a rail line built beside it. Branch off the MNL just north of Kaiapoi, park’n’ride at Pineacres for Kaiapoi’s north suburbs, and a termini at Ravenswood.
I hadn’t thought of that. That is a brilliant idea.
thanks!
i do feel like it does pose the issue of frequency and whether a double-track Addington-Kaiapoi stretch could handle what i’m presuming would have to be upwards of 6-8TPH (branching half & half to Rangiora & Ravenswood) as well as freight and the Coastal Pacific.
would at some point a bypass from Islington to Belfast alongside SH1 be necessary? (would also enable a christchurch airport station for the fans of airport express trains, but also imagine the Coastal Pacific calling there.)
Double track would handle 6 – 8 tph, plus the 4 freight trains a day and 1 Coastal Pacific a day. The bigger question would be whether the populations of Rangiora, Kaiapoi and Pegasus/Woodend.
Rangiora has the same population as Pukekohe and there is no way that many trains would be run to just service Pukekohe.
i mean, Pukekohe is getting 6TPH at peak as of now?
hence the whole ‘branch line alongside the Woodville bypass’ thing; split the peak frequency 3-4TPH each after Kaiapoi
Pukekohe is only getting 6tph because there is another 15 stations (soon to be 18) between there and the city. There is no line in Christchurch that goes remotely close to having that catchment.
Commuter rail in Christchurch is only going to serve the surrounding towns and a relatively small catchment within the city.
Light rail is the way to go in Christchurch, ideally narrow guage so it could be extended in the future as a tram/train arrangement to Rangiora and Rolleston.
Where should it stop, should the line get as far as Amberley and Ashburton one day??
One tricky point is that Woodend, Pegasus, and Ravenswood are way beyond walkable distance from Rangiora. And yes, there are only 4-5 bus services over the whole day linking between Pegasus and Rangiora. Although I believe there are bus links every 60 mins between Pegasus (and Woodend and Ravenswood) and Kaiapoi.
Jezza, I actually work in Rangiora but live in the City (Christchurch Central), and also lived in Rangiora at one point after moving from Auckland. So I do drive or catch the bus to Rangiora from Christchurch for work each day.
From my anecdotal evidence these days there is less and less divide between Christchurch and North Canterbury towns especially the ones in the Waimak council. Think of everything up to Ravenwood (so Kaiapoi, Rangiora, Ohoka, Woodend, Waikuku, Pegasus, Ravenwood) as “outer suburbs” rather than “self-contained satellite towns”, or using the Auckland analogy, treat them more as Albany/Papakura than Pukekohe/Warkworth when considering the transport needs. People come to and leave these towns for Christchurch doing all sorts of things during the day.
This is even more so for Rolleston, Lincoln, Prebbleton at the Selwyn Council end. They are even less self-contained towns than Rangoon (aka Rangiora) and act really like the outer suburbs for Christchurch.
even within the main urban area was thinking Addington,Riccarton, Strowan Rd, Papanui, Sturrocks Rd, Northwood, Belfast
I’m well aware that those towns are very much part of the greater Christchurch area.
My point is the size of the catchment of these lines, it’s much smaller than any of the lines in Auckland and Wellington and is one of the reasons that suburban rail died in Chch even before it died in Dunedin.
Yes, the line from the north runs through some suburbs but anything south of Papanui is likely to be quicker on a bus once you account for walking time from a Moorhouse Ave station and a more circuitous route.
I think Chch is more suited to light rail along core bus routes, designed to be extended along the rail tracks to Rolleston and Rangiora.
Hard to predict the future, but it seems like we’ll be heading into an era of investment into an ageing population (hospitals) rather than population growth (transport, schools, housing). We are so used to the population growing at a massive rate, but it’s hard to see why that will continue.
Transport investment will probably be limited to making better use of what we have (eg bus lanes) than the big billion dollar investments.
For decades immigration rather than natural population growth has been the driving force for NZ’s population growth. Global immigration is going to continue. Climate change for instance will be a significant factor causing the global movement of peoples. So, if New Zealand wants to continue being a migrant receiving country I don’t see that changing. The 1.5% annual increase in population this paper discusses is actually quite conservative. New Zealand has had faster growth periods.