What’s happening in the transport world right now?

I haven’t blogged anything for a while, so this is just a quick update on a few things going on in the transport world in Christchurch right now.

A lot of these are quite dry and only the transport tragics will know much about them. So for everyone else here’s a quick summary – I’ve kept strictly to one sentence each.

• In June the Canterbury Regional Land Transport Plan was adopted by Ecan setting out $10 billion of transport investment over the next ten years with mass rapid transit as the headline project, although it only lasted two weeks before being quietly removed.
• In June Christchurch adopted it’s Long Term Plan, but with the caveat that the entire transport programme will have to be redone in September when we expect central government to cut funding for most of the proposed footpaths, cycleways and public transport improvements.
• In June the Minister of Transport released his Government Policy Statement on Land Transport, setting out how they are defunding walking, cycling and public transport to pay for 14 new motorways, almost exclusively in the North Island.
• In June Waka Kotahi adopted their “investment prioritisation methodology” which sets out how they will choose which projects get funding and which don’t, signalling almost no funding for anything do with walking or cycling, or public transport outside of Auckland and Wellington.
• In June the Minister released a proposed law change which would take power off local communities to set safe speed limits in their neighbourhoods in favour of concentrating power for these decisions in Wellington.
• This week the Independent Hearings Panel for Plan Change 14 released their 500 page recommendation with lots of detailed nuance but essentially massively upzones huge swathes of Christchurch, for formal adoption by Council in September.
• In July Government released their Emissions Reduction Plan 2 saying that they aren’t really going to do anything to reduce transport emissions but instead rely on the somewhat flaky emissions trading scheme.
• In March the Greater Christchurch Spatial Plan was adopted which included, among other things, actions to develop a Greater Christchurch Transport Plan and progress planning for mass rapid transit.
• In August the Transport Minister confirmed he is not going to provide a special funding allocation for PT Futures anymore.
• Ecan is kicking into gear with their review of the Canterbury Regional Policy Statement setting out a broad raft of policies around how landuse is managed throughout Canterbury and includes, among other things, how development should or shouldn’t be allowed under the airport noise contour.
• Despite the economic slowdown everywhere else, it doesn’t feel to me like Christchurch is slowing down that much, with lots of construction around the city and several new buildings being announced recently.
• Despite the new government’s antagonism, the numbers of people cycling and using public transport in the city are continuing to increase and are at the highest levels we’ve seen in a decade.

So a lot going on; a real mixed bag of bad and good. It’s not the easiest time to be in the transport planning game but can’t do much else but keep on trucking and hope things get better soon.