Christchurch Bus Priority Measures: Main South 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 South Road is part of 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 South 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
• Better spacing of bus stops, which may mean repositioning of some bus stops.

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

Next Steps

The investigation phase of this project was completed in mid 2008. The detailed design phase of this project is programmed to commence in August 2009. The detailed design phase will involve preparation of construction documents and will be followed by construction of the Bus priority measures.