Christchurch Bus Priority Measures: Main North Road

Current Stage: Detailed design and Construction

New Zealand Transport Agency, along with the Christchurch City Council and Environment Canterbury, are delivering measures that will help improve bus journey time reliability in Christchurch.

Background

Christchurch traffic has increased to a point where we are averaging around 4000 vehicles stuck in congestion every day. If traffic continues to grow at the same rate there will be around 12,500 vehicles a day sitting in congestion in ten years' time. This has serious implications not just for transportation, but also for the environment.

A quality bus system that is reliable, safe, comfortable and convenient is one answer to this problem. A full bus equates to 40 fewer cars on the road. However, in order to encourage more people to travel by bus,we need to make bus travel more reliable and bus priority helps achieve this.

Main North Road and Papanui Road are a high demand public transport route that provides a vital part of the Christchurch transport system. Increasing congestion on this route is resulting in unreliable travel times for buses.

Bus Priority Measures

Measures identified to help achieve this journey time reliability are being delivered for Main North Road.

The measures are:

• Peak period bus lanes
• Improved junction layouts to enable buses to be first at traffic signals
• Special traffic signals to give the bus a head start

A detailed explanation of these measures can be found at www.buspriority.co.nz

Main North Road will remain as two lanes in each direction for general traffic. Special lanes for buses will be located at the road shoulders. Consequently, where bus lanes are envisaged parking will be reduced at these locations.

Next Steps

This project is nearing the end of the detailed design phase. A contractor will be engaged in the next few months with construction programmed to commence in early July. At a similar time an education campaign will commence with information for all road users on how the bus priority measures will operate. The bus priority measures are programmed to become operational from mid September .