Skip to main content Skip to page navigation
Greater Christchurch banner image
  1. Home
  2. Spatial Planning
  3. Greater Christchurch Transport Plan

Greater Christchurch Transport Plan

Our transport system will play an integral part in supporting and shaping the growth of Greater Christchurch. We have to integrate transport planning with where and how we live, get to work, access shops and services, schools and move around our neighbourhood.

Greater Christchurch is growing and this is putting pressure on the sub-region’s vast transport network. If we continue as we are now – often making trips with only one person in a car – then as Greater Christchurch’s population grows, the roads will become more congested we will not meet our emission targets. This means changing the way we travel and reducing our reliance on fossil-fuelled cars for all of our trips. We need to provide people with greater choice about how they travel, increase our use of sustainable transport, and ensure that the trips we do make are safer.

The Greater Christchurch Transport Plan will provide a single plan for transport in the Greater Christchurch sub-region. The plan will align with central Government and Greater Christchurch Partnership objectives. It will provide for consistent and integrated investment in transport and propose an action plan in the short, medium and longer term.

Work is underway to prepare a high-level outline of the outcomes, objectives and key interventions proposed for transport in Greater Christchurch. In setting the policy context for the Plan, we are building off existing plans, strategies and business cases.  The investment focus will be short-to-medium term, and will consider how to accelerate the Public Transport Futures investment programme.

Stage 2 will further detail the transport policies and actions that are required to give effect to the Spatial Plan. We are developing the second stage of the transport plan which will have a longer term investment focus in tandem with preparing the Spatial Plan documentation. It will also identify policy interventions that may be needed to implement the Spatial Plan.

We are working alongside the Greater Christchurch Spatial Plan and Mass Rapid Transit investigation. These projects work together, and we want to give our residents as full a picture as possible of the future for Greater Christchurch.

The Greater Christchurch Public Transport (PT) Futures programme is fundamental to achieving our vision. It comprises three components:

  • Foundations
  • Rest of network
  • Mass rapid transit (MRT)

A combined business case for the Foundations and Rest of Network components was formally endorsed by the partner Councils in December 2020, and by the Waka Kotahi Board in May 2021.

View Greater Christchurch Public Transport Futures Combined Business Case Summary - Nov 2020  [PDF, 6.7 MB]

The business case recommends an investment programme for inclusion in the partner organisations’ Long Term Plans that:  

  • delivers high-frequency PT options to existing Key Activity Centres (KACs) and planned growth areas
  • provides reliable bus services with journey times that are competitive with private vehicles
  • enhances the safety and attractiveness of the environment at bus stops for customers
  • improves bus routing and frequency that takes people where they want to go, when they want to get there
  • provides a catalyst for land use development adjacent to frequent public transport routes.

The first engagement on specific service improvements was in 2021, with implementation planned for 2023.

The development of the Greater Christchurch Transport Plan and Investment Programme will also consider how to accelerate the Public Transport Futures investment programme.

More information about the development of the Mass Rapid Transit Business case can be found here.