There will be additional traffic in the St Albans, Edgeware and Mairehau areas when the Christchurch Northern Corridor opens. We're starting transport projects to manage this traffic and improve connections in the area.
The Christchurch Northern Corridor (CNC) is due to open in mid-2020 and will help people to travel to and from the north of Christchurch by extending the Northern Motorway from QEII Drive and Cranford Street, through to Innes Road.
Further information about this project is available on the NZ Transport Agency website(external link).
We are working with our partner organisations to develop a plan for mitigating the expected increase in traffic on Cranford Street and other streets in a way that:
Councillors have prioritised the first part of this plan, which needs to happen before the Christchurch Northern Corridor opens. They also instructed staff to investigate several other projects that are important to the community.
Read more about the decision on Newsline.
The initial projects in St Albans, Edgeware and Mairehau are getting underway.
Cranford Street will be reconfigured between Berwick Street and Innes Road.
This stretch of road will be widened slightly to allow for extra lane. This lane will be made to allow for a bus lane or car pooling lane to operate.
A final decision on how this lane will operate (ie a bus lane, a clearway or a car pooling lane) will be made by Councillors.
Many of the intersections in the area will have changes as part of the work, particularly on Cranford Street and Sherborne Street as well as along Warrington Street.
Forfar Street and Warrington Street intersection
The following changes will be made to the intersections in the area:
The safer speed zone is now in place with signs installed over February.
A 40km/h slow speed zone has been introduced from just north of Innes Road through to Bealey Avenue. Rutland Street/Springfield Road will act as the western boundary for the slow speed zone, which will stretch through to Hills Road in the east. An area around the Edgeware shops will be made 30km/h.
Cycle routes will be built to improve connections through the neighbourhood.
The Christchruch Northern Corridor will have a shared path for pedestrians and cyclists running alongside it. A connection will be built between this path and the Papanui Parallel. It will run next to Cranford Street before turning west and linking with the Papanui Parallel at the Rutland Reserve.
The on-road cycle routes are designed to offer east-west connections to the Papanui Parallel cycleway, as well as alternative north-south routes to connect to Madras Street and Barbadoes Street.
You can see how these fit together in the map below.
Consultation on the projects took place in July and August 2019 and more than 50 changes have been made in response to feedback.
This consultation followed two previous rounds in mid-2018 and early 2019. The key themes of the previous rounds of consultation were:
We are working with our partners NZ Transport Agency, Waimakariri District Council and Environment Canterbury (ECan), on a package of projects that sit alongside the Christchurch Northern Corridor. The projects include park-and-ride facilities, additional bus services and a high occupancy vehicle lane.
The NZ Transport Agency will install a lane for vehicles with more than one person in them on State Highway One and the new Christchurch Northern Corridor motorway to encourage carpooling. This lane ends just before the Cranford Street roundabout. We are investigating whether this could extend along Cranford Street.
The Waimakariri District Council and NZ Transport Agency have agreed to co-fund park-and-ride facilities in the district and are currently investigating suitable locations. We are also investigating a park-and-ride facility near QEII Drive.
ECan has agreed to consider express bus services from Christchurch north that would travel along the Christchurch Northern Corridor and Cranford Street. They will consult with the Waimakariri community on any proposed changes. We are assessing the impact of bus lanes along Cranford Street and Sherborne Street that would complement an express bus services.
Pricing strategies work best when applied across a road network and not just to a single road corridor. We are exploring different methods that could be used to implement congestion charges across the city.
