There will be additional traffic in the St Albans, Edgeware and Mairehau areas when the Christchurch Northern Corridor opens. We're planning how we manage this traffic and reduce the number of vehicles travelling along the route.
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 currently 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 to mitigate the traffic from the Christchurch Northern Corridor has been approved by Council and construction is expected to start early 2020.
Consultation on the projects took place in July and August 2019 and more than 50 changes have been made in response to feedback.
The proposed projects include:
The projects follow two rounds of consultation in mid-2018 and earlier this year. 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.