Joyce promises not to help rebuild Christchurch.

[Kevyn Miller]

The recently released Government Policy Statement for Land Transport Funding 2012-2022 states that the eathquakes have caused up to $440m damage to Canterbury roads and that the government will pay 75% of the cost of repairing Christchurch City Council roads. This sounds generous but consider the following facts and it is a clear case of "lies, damned lies, and statistics!" (in the sense Mark Twain intended).

Treasuries budget forecast states that the cost of earthquake damage to Christchurch City Council roads is $750m.

NZTA's Funding Manual states that special assistance is available for damage resulting from a natural disaster, but only for direct damage and only if it occurs within 30 days of the disaster. Only half the damage from the aftershocks and pipe displacements qualifies for the higher "emergency works" rate of assistance. The other half only qualifies for the normal 43% rate for city council road maintenance. Ergo NZTA will contribute 60% of the repair costs, about what it normally provides to most district councils for regular maintenance.

According to the 2007 LTNZ pamphlet "Summary of Transport Facts " Christchurch City Council" the city council's roads carry 6% of the nations traffic (vkt). That means that in 2009/2010 traffic on Christchurch City Council roads provided NZTA with $100 million of the $1.8bn NZTA allocated to roadworks. NZTA provided CCC with $20m towards roadworks. CCC also spent $25m of ratepayer funds on road works. Assuming no increase in petrol tax and RUCs, CCC will pay NZTA $1bn to NZTA between 2012 and 2022 but National's policy is to spend just $350m of that in Christchurch. Even assuming that none of the undamaged roads in Christchurch will require any maintenance for the next ten years - which is very unlikely as the average reseal interval for local roads is 12 years - so that all of the $350m can be spent on earthquake damage repairs, that will leave the cash-strapped CCC having to find an additional $10m each year for the next years while the government diverts an average of $65m to assist ratepayers in other parts of the country.


That is not generous, it is scandalous. No other party has released their policy on funding the repair of Christchurch roads and re-orienting the road and PT networks to accomodate the massive shift of homes and businesses from the east and CBD to land on the greenbelts to the north and west and satellite towns. Their is no way that the Canterbury region can afford to receive $500m less than it is going to paying to NZTA over the next ten years. Note that this implies that Christchurch will still be subsidising other Canterbury councils to the tune of $150m and councils elsewhere in New Zealand (most probably in the South Island) to the tune of $500m.

[Daniel]

to accomodate the massive shift of homes and businesses from the east and CBD to land on the greenbelts to the north and west and satellite towns.

Excuse me for not being up with the play, but are they proposing to abandon the CBD and move it somewhere else?

[nztransportgeography]

I think this is rubbish, the expressway is going ahead just as it was before the eq.

[Kevyn Miller]

Daniel, The draft central city plan proposes reducing the "CBD" to just a few blocks around Hereford and Colombo streets with the rest of the central city within the four avenues being low-rise mixed use neighbourhoods. The general idea is to reinvent the 18th century for the 21st century by having ground floor shops facing onto existing roads and upstairs apartments facing onto new lanes and squares or courtyards, emulating typical older euopean town/city centre layouts. This is partly a response to the fact that half the businesses that have relocated from the central city to Addington, Hornby, the airport estate or the former borough centres have indicated they prefer being where they are now, the other half want or need an actual CBD of related commercial businesses, ie thats the corporate lawyers, accountants etc. It seems to be mainly the smaller businesses that were in the cheaper older buildings that don't intend moving back to a rebuilt CBD.

The other businesses moving to the west are the manufacturers that had been located at Bromley and Woolston. They are taking their rebuild money to stronger ground by the airport.

Brownley has already indicated that three subdivision propsals totalling 7,000 sections in the north-west will get the nod now that CERA has pulled the Greater Christchurch Urban Development Strategy out of the Environment Court. They are adjacent to Prestons/Marshlands Rds, adjacent to the QEII Drive/Northern Motorway extention interchange and adjacent to Belfast Rd/Northern Motorway extension. The latest proposal for the Northern Motorway extension shows that there is no connection between the motorway and the Belfast Bypass/Russley Rd 4-laning.
http://www.nzta.govt.nz/projects/northe ... t-2011.pdf

For nztransportgeography 's benefit - the RoNS are State Highways, no ratepayers money is required just petrol taxes/RUCs. Although the Northern Motorway/QEII 4-laning was conditional on CCC building the Hills Rd connection. The fact of the matter is that over the next ten years Christchurch and other Canterbury road users will pay the government enough in petrol taxes and RUCs to fully fund all of the maintenance and construction funding that was in the NLTP before the quakes as welll as funding the full $750m quake repair bill and replace the BusXchange and (maybe) add commuter rail on the Rolleston-Hornby-Rangiora corridor. But we can't do that and still be expected to be a cash cow for the rest of the country. There is recent precedent for making that sort of decision.

[Daniel]

Daniel, The draft central city plan proposes reducing the "CBD" to just a few blocks around Hereford and Colombo streets with the rest of the central city within the four avenues being low-rise mixed use neighbourhoods. The general idea is to reinvent the 18th century for the 21st century by having ground floor shops facing onto existing roads and upstairs apartments facing onto new lanes and squares or courtyards, emulating typical older euopean town/city centre layouts. This is partly a response to the fact that half the businesses that have relocated from the central city to Addington, Hornby, the airport estate or the former borough centres have indicated they prefer being where they are now, the other half want or need an actual CBD of related commercial businesses, ie thats the corporate lawyers, accountants etc. It seems to be mainly the smaller businesses that were in the cheaper older buildings that don't intend moving back to a rebuilt CBD.

The other businesses moving to the west are the manufacturers that had been located at Bromley and Woolston. They are taking their rebuild money to stronger ground by the airport.

Hmm... you might not agree with me, but I think that the urban layout of low-rise mixed use neighbourhoods having ground floor shops facing onto existing roads and upstairs apartments facing onto new lanes and squares or courtyards could be the best thing to ever come out of the disaster. And I predict that over 10-20 years the commercial activity will return. When there's been no earthquakes for a long time having things built on stronger ground won't be as much of a priority as other factors.
The disadvantages of being based in Addington and Hornby will tell after some time and they'll move back to the (hopefully) attractive new Christchurch CBD.

But I do agree that news that there is still rubble to be cleared in the Christchurch CBD says a lot about how the government has handled things and makes me question their priorities.

[metroman]

I think market forces are largely going to determine where businesses locate. While I haven't seen what it is like now. I only know what it was like before February 22. Surely a secondary cbd will emerge along the lines of Manuakau, or a series of town centres. Authorities must have some kind of back up plan which would involve relocating the cbd, it just seems like a question which is on everyone's lips, no one wants to address.

[Kevyn Miller]

Yes the market determined where businesses relocated to immediately after the February quake. Some government offices were relocated to Wellington, some national company's South Island regional offices were relocated to Wellington or Auckland. They are likely to return to the rebuilt CBD esp. once the GFC is over. Most local businesses have relocated to the former Borough commercial centres at Papanui and Riccarton, both of which are on busy bus routes. Some have relocated to light industrial estates or high tech clusters which are mainly on airport land in the old greenbelt or former railway land at Addington, along Blenheim Rd and along the Hornby branch line, hence well suited to commuter rail links with Rolleston and Rangiora.

The Central City Plan is a formal plan required under the CERA legislation just for the redevelopment within the four avenues. What is coming out of that planning process is not binding on the CERA Minister when making other land use decisions and nor does the NZTAs RoNS or the Greater Christchurch Urban Development Strategy agreed by CCC, NZTA and Selwyn and Waimakariri councils. So, in essence we have the Minister of Transport allowing bare minimum financial support for the transport part of the redesign of the city/region and the Earthquake Recovery Minister with total authority over land use decisions and neither one seems to be doing anything to address how the changing land use will change future travel patterns, as evidenced at least by the final design of the northern motorway/Belfast by-pass.

[pickle]

Kevyn, I hate this government but I think their response to the earthquake has been okay. It is still very early days yet in terms of rebuilding Christchurch.

[Jonthekiwi]

If National are re-elected as the main party in the next election, do you think Christchurch will get a rail system to move the city forward as part of the rebuilding process?

[geoff_184]

Christchurch doesn't seem to be realistically planning for a rail system, so if they don't want one, then it's a moot point about whether the government would back it or not. All we ever hear from Christchurch is multi-billion dollar pie-in-the-sky light rail or tram-train proposals, costing more than all of the Auckland and Wellington rail expenditure put together.

[Jonthekiwi]

Oh contre! CHCH wants a rail system of some sort. Do you think a National Party lead Govt would help fund it, or take the lead like it does with RONs in development, design and funding?

[john-ston]

Oh contre! CHCH wants a rail system of some sort.

Christchurch doesn't seem to be realistically planning for a rail system, so if they don't want one, then it's a moot point about whether the government would back it or not. All we ever hear from Christchurch is multi-billion dollar pie-in-the-sky light rail or tram-train proposals, costing more than all of the Auckland and Wellington rail expenditure put together.

I think the critical word here is the word realistic.

[pickle]

Oh contre! CHCH wants a rail system of some sort. Do you think a National Party lead Govt would help fund it, or take the lead like it does with RONs in development, design and funding?

NO simple as that, there is no way that National will give a cent more to public transport until they are kicked out.

[geoff_184]

Oh contre! CHCH wants a rail system of some sort.

I said realistic. They have not made any realistic proposals. Proposing projects that require more money than all of the Auckland and Wellington rail projects put together, is not realistic, and will never be funded by any government of any party.

Now if they wanted to start a service on existing tracks, with the centrepiece of the network being a 700 metre connection into the new transport centre, then they would have a project that could be done within a realistic budget.

[Daniel]

I gotta say that as long as they rebuild the existing CDB tramway having a suburban rail terminus at the location of the what was going to be the bus terminal as Geoff_184 advocates makes perfect sense. The existing rail corridors cover a fair amount Christchurch and the surrounding satellites as it is and for not too many millions they could build this terminus, some line stations and some DMU's and organise some feeder bus routes for the parts of the city not near the rail corridors. Especially with some of the Eastern suburbs so far from the rail corridors facing abandonment and conversion to greenbelt to me this seems like the ideal starting point for a proper public transport network for Christchurch.

I know the system in Karlsruhe is very impressive, but it shouldn't be forgotten that it was developed for sound pragmatic reasons. There had already been tram lines through that city for a long time and Duetsche Bundesbahn or whoever had already electrified surrounding heavy rail lines for freight. They didn't just decide to spend all of that money on the expensive electrification of heavy rail lines for the sakes of public transport, they modified the tram network and built some suitable trams. It's a great system that can be held as a model for cities adjacent to electrified heavy rail lines (that pass through suburbs) considering implementing a tramway or light rail, but really it's something they work towards incrementally unless you've got a lot of money to suddenly invest.
Christchurch's rail corridors aren't already electrified so why are they so sold on tram-trains?

[geoff_184]

Karlshrue had two same-gauge networks, and wanted to link them. Christchurch isn't in that situation, so tram-trains are no more relevant to Christchurch than they are to Auckland, Wellington or anywhere else.

The new transport centre in Christchurch, if it is still going ahead, is only 600 metres from the railway. A part of the city rebuild should be to construct a railway between the existing network, and the transport centre, just like a railway was built in Auckland from the existing network to the new transport centre (Britomart). That will then unlock the potential of the existing railway network in the greater Christchurch area.

It's so simple and obvious, yet it isn't being considered. Instead we hear of multi-billion dollar non-standard concepts, that frankly will only ensure Christchurch remains rail-free.

The worst part is that the timing of such a realistic proposal would be perfect right now, as Christchurch has the rebuild opportunity, as well as a lot of trains soon to be available from Auckland.

I would say it is a once in a lifetime perfect recipe for getting rail in place. Unfortunately, it looks as though the opportunity is going to be missed.

[Daniel]

as well as a lot of trains soon to be available from Auckland.

Quick question: this means that Christchurch has the same loading gauge as Auckland?

Or did you mean the SD/SA carriages?

[pcuser42]

as well as a lot of trains soon to be available from Auckland.

Quick question: this means that Christchurch has the same loading gauge as Auckland?

Or did you mean the SD/SA carriages?

The SAs are out of gauge as well, although they're too long rather than too tall.

[john-ston]

The SAs are out of gauge as well, although they're too long rather than too tall.

In saying that, the out of gauge issue I believe only affects limited parts of the country; I know the Midland Line is one of them because of Tunnel #1, but I don't think there are many more - certainly the Christchurch area (up to Midland #1) should be able to accommodate them comfortably.

The worst part is that the timing of such a realistic proposal would be perfect right now, as Christchurch has the rebuild opportunity, as well as a lot of trains soon to be available from Auckland.

I would have supported a tram-train proposal up until the first earthquake - now is the perfect opportunity to get a heavy rail corridor into Christchurch and fix that problem.

[Rail-it]

as well as a lot of trains soon to be available from Auckland.

Quick question: this means that Christchurch has the same loading gauge as Auckland?

Or did you mean the SD/SA carriages?

The SAs are out of gauge as well, although they're too long rather than too tall.

They would suit Christchurch just fine. Of course #1 on the midland line would be a problem.

If they can fit through the Waitakere tunnel at normal line speed, they should fit throught the Lyttleton tunnel just fine.

As well, they travel 25 curves with ease too, be it the bogies may need a bit of lube from the inside rail...

Whoever gets there hands on them, and manages to get the SA's with the S ride bogies are in for a long term excellent deal.

I wouldn't exactly say the same for the SA's with the x28020 bogies fitted.