The South Island deserves some public transport love, including better services in Christchurch, Dunedin and Queenstown and a revived Southerner train. But this seems further away than ever.
Canterbury is NZ's second largest regional economy after Auckland. In 2021 it overtook the Wellington region.
Greater Christchurch is NZ's second largest city. It is larger than Wellington and it is growing faster.
Canterbury by far is the second largest residential housing construction market.
Canterbury makes the second largest regional contribution to the National land transport fund, yet it receives much less back per capita than NZ's other most populous regions - Auckland, Waikato, Bay of Plenty, and Wellington.
Christchurch is NZ's second gateway city with a range of international flights connecting NZ to the wider world, it has the US Antarctic supply base, and the Lyttleton port for freight exports and imports and cruise liners visits.
Canterbury has a balanced economy of rural exports, manufacturing, construction, and professional services. Whereas the similar sized but slower growing Wellington region has increasingly become dependent on capital city administration services.
Canterbury has half the population and half the economy of the South Island (much like Auckland has half the population and half the economy of the North Island).
Yet New Zealanders, including policy makers seemed to be unaware that this independent South Island centre of growth exists.
Instead of New Zealand investing in infrastructure to support Christchurch, Canterbury and the South Island, successive governments have let transport connections go into managed decline.
There doesn't seem to be any positive vision for the South Island and its major cities and regions.
Thanks Brendon. Very useful and timely commentary. Aotearoa has never really had a policy around where to best focus investment and we tend to be very reactive to either apparent growth hotspots that get media attention (e.g. Auckland and Queenstown, because Aucklanders seem to equate the South Island with Queenstown). Christchurch has half the South Island's population but it seems to be that the quake rebuild was all the investment that was needed, ignoring the minor fact that a rebuild is about putting back what was there before, not making big positive moves. I'm planning specific pieces on South Island cities, starting with Christchurch, which will drill into more detail about each place as it was a very superficial glance in this particular post.
Thanks for the comment Darren. I would really like a Christchurch planning piece.
In my opinion the quickest, easiest, and most impactful thing to do from a planning perspective, would be to protect the existing rail corridors for future high density urban expansion (actually mid-rise development - but a higher-density built environment in the NZ context).
That is what I have most recently been actively campaigning on.
Thanks Darren great write-up. Just a note that your footnote 6 on Nelson fares seems to be missing. I'd be quite interested in seeing that raw data. cheers
Outside of the upper North Island golden triangle Canterbury is the only region to increase its regional share of GDP this century.
https://medium.com/@brendon-harre/minister-wellington-is-not-the-2nd-largest-region-in-nz-c459ee8f4a1c
Canterbury is NZ's second largest regional economy after Auckland. In 2021 it overtook the Wellington region.
Greater Christchurch is NZ's second largest city. It is larger than Wellington and it is growing faster.
Canterbury by far is the second largest residential housing construction market.
Canterbury makes the second largest regional contribution to the National land transport fund, yet it receives much less back per capita than NZ's other most populous regions - Auckland, Waikato, Bay of Plenty, and Wellington.
Christchurch is NZ's second gateway city with a range of international flights connecting NZ to the wider world, it has the US Antarctic supply base, and the Lyttleton port for freight exports and imports and cruise liners visits.
Canterbury has a balanced economy of rural exports, manufacturing, construction, and professional services. Whereas the similar sized but slower growing Wellington region has increasingly become dependent on capital city administration services.
Canterbury has half the population and half the economy of the South Island (much like Auckland has half the population and half the economy of the North Island).
Yet New Zealanders, including policy makers seemed to be unaware that this independent South Island centre of growth exists.
Instead of New Zealand investing in infrastructure to support Christchurch, Canterbury and the South Island, successive governments have let transport connections go into managed decline.
There doesn't seem to be any positive vision for the South Island and its major cities and regions.
https://medium.com/land-buildings-identity-and-values/draft-christchurch-the-chicago-of-new-zealand-5cce5da1e637
Thanks Brendon. Very useful and timely commentary. Aotearoa has never really had a policy around where to best focus investment and we tend to be very reactive to either apparent growth hotspots that get media attention (e.g. Auckland and Queenstown, because Aucklanders seem to equate the South Island with Queenstown). Christchurch has half the South Island's population but it seems to be that the quake rebuild was all the investment that was needed, ignoring the minor fact that a rebuild is about putting back what was there before, not making big positive moves. I'm planning specific pieces on South Island cities, starting with Christchurch, which will drill into more detail about each place as it was a very superficial glance in this particular post.
Thanks for the comment Darren. I would really like a Christchurch planning piece.
In my opinion the quickest, easiest, and most impactful thing to do from a planning perspective, would be to protect the existing rail corridors for future high density urban expansion (actually mid-rise development - but a higher-density built environment in the NZ context).
That is what I have most recently been actively campaigning on.
https://brendon-harre.medium.com/protecting-greater-christchurchs-rail-corridors-31f2040302cb
Kia ora Darren, did you see that ORC had to pull the Dunedin frequency and fares biz case cos WK said they can't fund it? Soooo disappointed.
Thanks Darren great write-up. Just a note that your footnote 6 on Nelson fares seems to be missing. I'd be quite interested in seeing that raw data. cheers
Thanks. I’ll have a look at the bung footnote.