Authorities believe Christchurch's controversial central city transport plan is still right for the city

The central city's controversial transport plan will make sense once the city is fully built, city planners say.

It's been a tough year for those managing Christchurch's central city transport strategy.

During that time, the An Accessible City (AAC) plan faced increasing criticism from politicians, businesses and the public. Its suffered funding freezes from the government and project delays as consensus from businesses was sought.

But those managing the controversial scheme still believe its right for the city, and that the full benefits will become clear in time.

AAC was released in October 2013 to replace the transport chapter of the Crown's Christchurch Central Recovery Plan. It is being built by the Christchurch City Council (CCC) and Crown development company Ōtākaro – though the latter is not involved in the design work.

Development of AAC was guided by the post-earthquake Share an Idea scheme, which called for input from the community to help shape the earthquake recovery. More than 106,000 ideas were put forward.

The result was a plan which aimed to prioritise walkers and cyclists in the central city, improve public transport services and slow motor vehicle traffic in the city's core.

 

 

It was greeted with enthusiasm, despite businesses raising concerns about parking from early on. But as construction of the projects rolled out, the results were met with increased frustration and criticism from politicians and businesses, which simmered away over the last year.

CCC transport operations manager Aaron Haymes said he believed they were "delivering what the people of Christchurch wanted".

He said a lot of things tied in together in the recovery plan for the whole city, like the precincts, anchor projects and transport network, so if only parts were built it would not give its optimum performance.

"So the more we can build, the more it will make sense and the better the city will function."

The NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) is involved with the AAC design and has promised $24 million towards the first stage of its projects – about $18m of which has been spent.

 

DAVID WALKER/STUFF

St Asaph St is one of the most complicated roads in the An Accessible City plan, as it aims to prioritise cars, buses and bikes in the same road.

 

NZTA regional relationships South Island director Jim Harland said AAC was "fundamentally the right thing to be doing".

He said the the system was designed for conditions likely in ten years time, when anchor projects and private developments in the CBD were mostly complete and there would be a lot more people living and working in town.

 

THE TIPPING POINT

St Asaph St has become emblematic of the perceived problems with the transport plan. The $4.5m upgrade has been a source of contention since it was completed last December.

It's one of the most complicated roads in the AAC plan as it aims to prioritise cars, buses, and cycling.

Complaints about the new layout include the narrowness of the lanes, loss of on-street parking, and danger to cyclists as cars turning off the street have their view obscured by parked cars. But the build is praised in some quarters for encouraging cycling and creating an attractive city suitable for all types of travel.

Following a post-construction safety review, a raft of changes were recommended. The council began consulting with frustrated members of the business community, who raised safety concerns and called for more car parks to be added.

 

STUFF

A proposed tram extension, which would begin four years earlier than planned under a report by council staff which has since been pulled.

 

Not all of the business community are against the changes. Central City Business Association (CCBA) chairman Brendan Chase, who owns property along St Asaph St, said he supported the layout changes to the street and the transport plan in general, though he accepted there were some imperfections in the current design.

"It's a bit tighter, but everything I've read overseas suggest that cycling and pedestrian activity helps grows central city business populations, and it's better for business."

Chase said the trouble was the plan was at the first stage of implementation, so it was a bit hard to see that.

He said there were plenty of opportunities for off-street parking.

"Car parking is car storage, and if you think about it like that, you don't give it prime real estate."

Two rework options, one with minor and one with major changes, were developed and put out for public consultation. They received 329 submissions, 80 per cent of which favoured minor changes. The rework options received over eight times as many submissions as consultation on the initial design for the road, which had just 39.

At the same time, the Central City Business Group (a separate group to the CCBA) commissioned a survey from research company Research First which came to the opposite conclusion, finding 72 per cent preferred the major overhaul option.

 

 

It leaves the water murky for council staff trying to come up with a rework solution for the difficult road.

Haymes said he did not believe the street was fundamentally flawed and was working largely as intended, but it needed some "minor adjustments to work really well".

"I just think that the street is something quite different to anything that most people in New Zealand, or Christchurch in particular, have seen before."

He said the St Asaph St project was "probably the tipping point that started to generate a lot of interest and more public opinion".

The council had started getting higher quality feedback that was better informed over the last year as people had learnt more about the projects in greater detail, he said.

Haymes said while they had "without a doubt" met the consultation requirements outlined in the Local Government Act while planning previous AAC projects, they had started taking a new approach he called engagement rather than consultation.

Business owners on streets with planned works now sit down with council project managers and designers in council offices and give feedback while the design phase is ongoing, rather than the council finishing designs and then putting them out for general consultation.

"So by the time we land a design that we put up for public consultation, it's pretty much what the people in the street want. Now we just have to see what the general public think of it."

The new approach had been used while consulting on upcoming Hereford St works, expected to begin in late-2018 or early-2019.

Haymes said people needed to understand not all streets in the plan would come out looking the same as St Asaph St, as different streets prioritised different modes of transport and would have different levels of reconstruction.

He said one of the objectives of AAC was to "make the provision of parking the choice of developers".

A lot of cities had requirements for providing as part of building developments, but Christchurch's recovery plan had left that choice with developers – but also allowed them to use a large amount of their land for parking without needing additional consents.

 

JOSEPH JOHNSON/STUFF

NZTA regional relationships South Island director Jim Harland says the An Accessible City plan is fundamentally the right thing to be doing.

 

"So developers have a choice, and if they're creating demand we'd encourage that they think about what responsibility they're taking for providing parking for the demand they're creating, rather than relying on the council providing it."

Haymes said the opening of the council's Lichfield St car park would add another 800 spaces and other car parks in the area were not full, so the zone was well catered for.

Harland said was important for authorities to "keep retelling the story of why we are doing these changes", and especially about the importance of accessibility and transport changes.

"There's been one or two points of concern like St Asaph St, and that broader story hasn't been to the fore in the way perhaps it could have been."

Harland said those designing the plan had given quite a lot of thought to the hierarchy of network of the different transport modes, and to "ensuring a driver could logically find their way to a carpark and they would be placed so that people could then realistically walk to their destination".

He said now the need was to complete the program "as quickly as can be".

"Once it's all finished and operating as a network I think people will see how effective it is, and how attractive it is."

 

PUBLIC TRANSPORT

One of AAC's goals was to boost public transport use, but patronage has remained fairly flat since the earthquakes.

The bus network is managed by Environment Canterbury (ECan), despite the supporting infrastructure being provided by the city council.

ECan's 2020 goal is to increase public transport patronage in Christchurch and Timaru to 20 million passenger trips per year, and achieve 50 per cent cost recovery from fares.

They have a lot of ground to make up in a short time-frame. ECan figures show patronage was less than 14 million for the 2016-17 financial year. For September 2017, the average fare cost excluding GST was $1.55, while the subsidy per passenger was $2.65

Senior manager public transport Stewart Gibbon said successful public transport stemmed from the balanced application of several elements, such as infrastructure and customer behaviour.

He said while public transport infrastructure like bus lanes did impact reliability and comfort of services, having enough key demand sources was equally critical.  

Gibbon said from a public transport perspective, the network of services and therefore patronage expectations are predicted on a finished AAC and fully functional city centre.

ECan figures show there were 3.5 million passenger trips on public transport from July 1 to September 30 – an increase of 1.7 per cent compared to the same time last year.

Gibbon said public transport was starting to see a return to positive growth, which was being driven by increases in employment and social activity levels in the central business district and improvement in the reliability of the service as road work in the greater area was completed.

Harland said there was not a solution to Christchurch's public transport issues yet, but it was being actively worked on, with patronage and service frequency and coverage being looked at.

He said the earthquakes disrupted many trips orientated towards the central business area, so "inevitably you're not going to get back to that level until you have more activities to bring people in".

 

TIMING CHANGES POSSIBLE

The council recently mooted changes to when parts of AAC would be built, looking to push forward a tram line extension into High St while delaying rework to Kilmore and Salisbury streets by five years.

The report was delayed for "further assessment" after a Stuff article outlining the changes was published.

Haymes said they were trying to adjust the program to match development patterns in the city, but the report was pulled to "make sure some of that fine detail is absolutely spot on".

He said the report had been discussed briefly with NZTA and ECan, but they had probably been missing a bit of detail in their conversations.

Developers had mixed feelings about the idea. Richard Peebles, who had called for the council to to immediately start the tram extension, said the adjusted timeline would see the High St work start just as new businesses there opened, and called for the work to start now.

Haymes said the council were looking at the timeframes around High St to try and get closer alignment with businesses.

"The whole idea of actually getting in there soon and doing that was to limit disruption to them down the track, so if we're going to accelerate it with no benefits, then why bother?"

He said any major project going through local government in New Zealand had a structured process to go through.

"You can shorten those time frames as much as you possibly can, but you can't get around the fact that you've got to carry out certain steps."

It was hoped the reworked report would go before the Infrastructure, Transport and Environment Committee before the end of the year, Haymes said.

The next project scheduled to start was an upgrade to Victoria St. It was due to start in mid-July but has been left in limbo after businesses expressed doubts over the design.

Haymes said they were still working through the design and did not have a start date scheduled.