Quake road repairs for five suburbs

Five suburbs deemed to have streets still in "very poor condition" due to earthquake damage, have been outlined as areas of priority for roading improvements by the city council.

Parts of Riccarton, Richmond, New Brighton, Linwood/Woolston and the wider Spreydon/Somerfield/Waltham/Beckenham suburbs have been identified as the priorities in a $40 million investment case to the Government.

The proposal will ask for $40 million from the Christchurch regeneration acceleration fund for roading and transport improvements.

About 300km of the 3000km of roading owned by the city council was severely damaged or needed to be dug up for repairs to other infrastructure after the earthquakes.

But while the city council and Government spent $2.2 billion on a five-and-a-half-year programme to fix horizontal infrastructure, the report states many assets need to be repaired over the next 30 years to bring them back up to pre-quake levels.

All city councillors voted for the proposal except Harewood city councillor Aaron Keown, at the first official meeting on Thursday.

The report proposes using $25 million to $30 million on street improvements in the five areas, with the remainder of the $40 million to be spent on bus priority and reducing serious injury and fatal crashes. 

Cr Keown said he voted against the adopting the report because he wanted all the money to go to roading improvements.

"No-one in my 12 years of being elected has asked me for a bus lane," he said. 

The report will now be sent to the Treasury.

But Cr Yani Johanson said the money was a "small drop in the bucket of what is needed."

"I do want to sound a word of caution, $40 million will not go very far at all. If you think about North Avon Rd roading renewal, one roading renewal costs $6 million. There are a number of roads in there and if they cost $6 million each it is not going to be hundreds it is going to be a handful," he said.

Improvements to Linwood and Woolston are estimated to cost $5,103,500, $6,677,500 for New Brighton, $6,990,000 for Riccarton, $5,879,500 for Richmond and $5,118,000 for the wider Spreydon/Somerfield, Waltham/Beckenham area.

The investment case said without a cash injection traffic congestion would increase and “undermine the city’s regeneration.”

The Christchurch regeneration acceleration fund was first announced by Labour in 2017 as part of its pre-election Plan for Cantebury to accelerate recovery from the earthquakes.

The $300 million fund was intended to repair horizontal infrastructure and advance key regeneration projects, such as the mulit-use arena.