The decisions explained – Public Transport

Despite uncertainty around ongoing central government funding, the Council approved the option with the highest level of investment in Public Transport Services, with some Council decisions leading to some reductions in the targeted rate across Greater Christchurch.

The work involved in this core service

Our Public Transport services are:

  • Providing bus and ferry services in Greater Christchurch and Timaru
  • Providing Total Mobility funding, and support for Community Vehicle Trusts

These services contribute to Council’s long-term aspiration to:

  • Champion safe, reliable, multi modal transport choices

And its strategic priorities to:

  • Promote sustainable and healthy living and working environments, and
  • Help communities respond and adapt to climate change.

Council decisions

During deliberations, Council indicated that further decisions regarding public transport will need to be made in the Annual Plan 2025/26 (Year 2 of the Long-Term Plan 2024-34), given the high level of uncertainty around funding availability through the National Land Transport Programme 2024-27.

Several key decisions made at deliberations related to delaying some work until government decisions are clearer, including:

  • Decreasing targeted rate funding of $600K in Year 1 by delaying work on the mass transit business case until Year 2
  • Decreasing targeted rate funding of $2.9M in Year 2 by delaying work on route 1 improvements until Year 3, to align with the improvements to direct service between the main urban centres of Waimakariri (Rangiora and Kaiapoi) and Christchurch city
  • Decreasing targeted rate funding of $500K in Year 1 by delaying the start of route 7 uplift until January 2025.

Other decisions affecting Public Transport were made to decrease the cost to ratepayers, including:

  • Decreasing targeted rate funding by $500K by removing public transport support for cruise ship passengers
  • Decreasing targeted rate funding by $100K by not replacing bus services where Ministry of Education funding has been removed.

There were two decisions to support further work in key areas of the network, including:

  • Increasing targeted rate funding by $400K in Year 1 to enable early engagement with Halswell and the rest of the community, on the rest of network business case
  • Increasing targeted rate funding of $800K in Year 2 by bringing forward the improvements to the direct service between the main urban centres in Selwyn (Rolleston and Lincoln) and Christchurch City from Year 3.

Our community has told us repeatedly we need to do more with our public transport services. We’ve worked hard with our partner councils and providers to identify ways to transform our services and ensure we can meet the needs of our growing urban areas. We are dependent on central government funding, and must consider the impact of this when making significant investment decisions.