Christchurch is a sprawling mess. The Canterbury Plains, once the nation’s breadbasket, is now increasingly covered by metastasising suburbs. Though Greater Christchurch is forecast to continue growing at almost twice the rate of Wellington, our growth strategy seems to be entirely dependent on cars and roads. But as both Auckland and Wellington are finding, cars and roads just don’t cut it. Especially with the looming crisis of climate change, why doesn’t the South Island’s biggest city have a plan that anticipates these challenges?

The future of Greater Christchurch’s built environment will affect more people in New Zealand than any other urban area except Auckland. The implications are huge from a number of viewpoints -economic, financial, safety, health, environmental or a social perspective, that is why we need to change. Christchurch is experiencing similar transport growth pains to what Auckland experienced due to its auto-dependency from a motorway-only city building model in the post WW2 period. Fortunately for Auckland efforts have been made to correct this transport bias in recent decades with the revival of commuter rail (Britomart, electrification, new trains and the soon to come city rail link), the success of bus rapid transit to the North Shore (and soon the eastern Ameti busway to Botany) and in the future light rail south to Mt Roskill, Mangere and the Airport and north-west to Kumeu. If Greater Christchurch continues with its current transport and land-use pattern it can expect that 55% of new housing will be auto-dependent greenfield suburbia with little or no supporting rapid transport options. Given current city growth trends greenfield development could grow by 50,000 cars to 2028. For obvious reasons this sprawling should be a serious concern for Canterbury and New Zealand. Do the politicians really think we can handle that many added cars on our roadways?

We need to re-establish commuter trains on the existing tracks. Christchurch’s rail corridor is an obvious underutilised asset, this transport corridor follows the growth corridor and there is a number of greenfield development opportunities close to potential new train stations.

Greater Christchurch has been through some tough times. The new approaches to building and funding urbanisation being developed in New Zealand gives the city an opportunity to create a new and better built environment. 

We need to convince the decision makers at the City Council and Regional Council to take up rail.

Share, Retweet, email and message this so more people hear about our campaign and leave a comment if you have ideas for how we can convince decision makers to Start Planning Now.