Protecting Greater Christchurch’s Rail Corridors
Presentation to the Greater Christchurch Partnership 27th October 2023 by Regional Councilor Joe Davies and Brendon Harré
Introduction by Joe Davies
Kia Ora tatou,
Thank you for giving us the opportunity to speak to this committee today. Just before we begin, I’d like to note that while being a Regional Councilor representing North East Christchurch the views expressed today are not necessarily those of ECan and are those of my own and of Brendon’s.
Through the general election campaign, the major parties both pledged 300–400 million dollars for Canterbury transport projects. Auckland and Wellington were promised tens of billions. In all likelihood we will do better than 300–400 million over the next 10 years because of our economic and population strengths, but whether we get the proposed MRT system, who knows. There is a lot of uncertainty.
Today what we’re suggesting and advocating for is free, we’re asking for the protection of Greater Christchurch’s rail corridors through the spatial plan, so that future leaders and generations have the capacity to develop innovative urban form. You have the ability to make a simple amendment to the current draft, that will enable Greater Christchurch to become more like Copenhagen and other successful cities that had the foresight to plan ahead for their futures. If we do not get this right now, then the cost to remedy poor urban form and hyper car use will be much greater in the future.
My main involvement in this initiative and deputation has been in the design of the maps, and also promoting this view at the region council. Brendon will provide our request and the rationale behind the request.
Brendon Harré is a resident of Christchurch and has been a strong advocate for the region. He works as a registered nurse in Hillmorton Hospital. Brendon has participated voluntarily in an ‘urban land markets group’ of about a dozen policy experts that provided advice to the Ministry of the Environment about Resource Management reforms. This group produced several cabinet papers, such as, “A New Approach to Urban Planning” which detailed the importance of spatial planning, and the paper “How we supply infrastructure makes housing unaffordable”.
Main presentation by Brendon Harré
To add to Joe’s description of me. Between 2004 and 2012 I lived in Helsinki near Tuomarila train station that was just under 20 km and 25 minutes to downtown Helsinki. In Greater Christchurch the equivalent location is the 20km dotted circle on Joe’s map. The above picture was the view from our apartment. All the buildings you can see are within a few hundred metres of the station and were built between 2004 and 2012. In simple terms, what we are asking for is this possibility to be protected for Greater Christchurch.
Firstly, I would like to explain an important aspect of Joes map. As most of you know MRT stands for mass rapid transit. The MRT corridor is where the Greater Christchurch Partnership plan to upgrade the most infrastructure and where they expect the largest built environment response. For that reason, it is described as the primary growth corridor. We would like consideration to be given to protecting the regions rail corridors as supportive growth corridors, if and when required.
The rest of this presentation is in two parts. The first part gets straight to the point and outlines our specific requests. The second part provides the rationale.
So, our requests are.
We would like a land corridor to be designated so that double tracked electrified rail is future protected in the following areas.
The 32-kilometre rail corridor from Rolleston to Lyttelton.
The 30-kilometre rail corridor from Rangiora to Addington.
And a 17-kilometre rail corridor from Lincoln to Hornby. This Lincoln line includes a short existing spur from Hornby to near the southern motorway. From there to Lincoln a new ‘paper’ railway line would need to be designated because the original line was overbuilt in Prebbleton.
In total we would like about 79 km of railway lines protected for future double tracking and electrification.
We would also like — a third main line — designated for freight from the inland port near Rolleston to Lyttelton.
Further we would like a zoned corridor that extends 1km on either side of these railway lines protected from low density sprawl.
Within this wider corridor we would like zoning, indicating.
(1) a minimum of 60 housing units per hectare — see the slide for an indication of what sort of built environment this implies (mid-rise not high-rise buildings). This zoning would be contingent on if and when passenger rail infrastructure is provided. In the meantime, the corridor would be protected from being developed over by low-rise urban sprawl.
(2) that around any future railway stations the public rights-of-way provide plentiful walkable and active mode access to the station — this can be achieved with various urban planning rules — such as having a minimum of 100 intersections per square kilometer and having smaller block sizes.
Obviously within Christchurch’s existing urban footprint, like for the proposed Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) urban growth corridor, these stipulations would be aspirational, because although there are planning mechanisms that enable densification, how much and when to densify is decided by existing households and property owners not councils or governments. There would be no blight, unlike when motorways were designated through inner Christchurch because the rail corridors already exist, and the stipulations do not prevent landowners making capital building improvements to their properties. Importantly, for the greenfield areas in the protected corridors these stipulations could be strictly enforced — preventing low value urban sprawl which is hard to correct after the fact.
Rationale
This presentation is not about arguing for specific rail transport projects or specific higher density developments. These should be investigated on a case-by-case basis. Our request is about protecting these options for the future.
95 years ago, you could catch an electric battery train from Christchurch Railway station at Moorhouse Ave to Lincoln and around to Little River. It took under 25 minutes to get to Lincoln. Unfortunately, NZ Rail chose not to invest in this passenger rail technology, or any alternative improvement. Instead, Canterbury’s rail network was put into managed decline. We think this was a mistake.
This mistake did not happen to the Wellington region which now has 90 km of electrified double track for passenger rail services. The Wellington region despite its population being more spread out, has higher public transport patronage, lower motor vehicle mode use, and a much better emission profile than Canterbury. The same mistake was though made in Auckland, but it was recognised about 20 years ago. Auckland’s MRT networks are now in a rebuilding phase to provide an alternative to its chronically congested road network.
We believe the ability to grow the capacity of Canterbury’s rail network needs to be an option that is kept open.
Our request is complementary to the proposed 22km MRT transport project and the surrounding primary urban growth corridor. Passenger rail on the existing rail corridor can feed into the MRT line at Riccarton and Papanui, thus providing a more comprehensive public transport network. In particular the MRT project provides a high-frequency city centre connection. In the past, the tram and train networks formed an integrated public transport network for Greater Christchurch — so there is historic precedent that this approach will be successful.
Another complementary advantage is if housing development on the primary growth corridor becomes constrained then the protected areas around the wider railway network can then be used to provide secondary urban growth corridors.
MRT infrastructure may be more successful than we anticipate. Once the initial MRT corridor is built, there might be high demand for further corridors. It is notable that when Copenhagen was about the size of Greater Christchurch in 1947 it developed the Finger Plan as its spatial strategy — this required protecting 170 km for double tracking and future urban growth. Obviously, this is far greater than Christchurch’s proposed 22-kilometre long MRT corridor.
The future is uncertain. At the moment when the major political parties are only promising hundreds of millions of dollars for Canterbury to get a bridge and a bypass then expansionary rail plans may seem forever out of reach. But future government priorities can change, so we should do the work needed to prepare for that change.
Unanticipated events do occur. Christchurch because of the earthquakes built at a density of about 15 houses per hectare in places like Longhurst rather than 60 houses per hectare along MRT corridors partly because plans were not in place.
Global warming and New Zealand’s shaky tectonic location mean unexpected destructive, and movement of people events can happen at any time. We think keeping our options open is a sensible approach to this uncertain future.
Our slide highlights the earthquake risk because that is fresh in our memories, but climate change may be the greater risk for increasing the movement of people. It is predicted that billions of people will need to move due to climate change. Fire, heat, drought, and floods will drive them out. Less affected places, which probably includes New Zealand and Canterbury, may need to make room for climate induced humanitarian disasters.
Less dramatically, immigration may be far higher than anticipated. Last year New Zealand grew by more than 100,000 people because of a high rate of immigration. At that growth rate New Zealand would increase its population from five to six million by 2033! Greater Christchurch being New Zealand’s second largest city would receive a significant proportion of this increase. This is not to say this eventuality will definitely occur — only that preparing for all potential possibilities is a sensible course of action.
Thank you for listening to our presentation about future proofing Greater Christchurch.
I hope you give the discussed requests serious consideration.
