A group of projects aiming to ease traffic congestion in the north of the city over the next 20 years will be taken to the next stage of development, the City Council has decided.

The roading network improvements which will be further developed are:

• Improvements of the Marshland Road intersections with Prestons and Belfast roads
• Extending Hills Road north from Innes Road to QEII Drive
• Upgrading the section of Hills Road from Aylesford Street south to Whitmore Street
• Upgrading Cranford Street from the English Park corner (Berwick Street) north to its intersection with Main North Road
• Creating a Northern Arterial from the northern motorway at Chaneys to Cranford Street, with Transit New Zealand responsible for the part north of QE11 Drive and the City Council for the section south of QE11 Drive

In his report to the 26 June Council meeting Principal Transport Planner Stuart Woods says it is important that the public has some certainty about which areas will be affected by projects. And, he says, as planning moves on, there will be numerous opportunities for people to have a say about the design and implementation of the projects.

“The projects which are adopted... are still to go through a variety of public processes, including designation requirement processes, the Long Term Council Community Plan consultation and the standard Council roading project development consultation,” Mr Woods says.

Among other recommendations adopted by the Council is strong support for Transit New Zealand to commit to and build the Northern Arterial Road from QEII Drive north to join the northern motorway at Chaneys. The Council will urge Transit NZ to do this within 10 years. It will also urge the national state highway agency to undertake at the same time a widening to four lanes of the section of QEII Drive east from the intersection with the Northern Arterial to where it will meet the Hills Road extension.

The Council also decided to start a study into bus priority measures and work with the regional council ECan to develop a proposal for Park and Ride in the study area.

The adopted strategy notes that the Council pursues the objectives of high-quality design, safety, good pedestrian facilities and support for alternative modes of transport.

As well, the Council reconfirmed its support for a widening project on Northcote Road and said it supports in the long term the idea of a bypass west of Belfast. However, it would advise Transit NZ that this network link should not be considered before the Northern Arterial work.

The 26 June decision means the abandonment of an earlier proposal to link Rutland and Grassmere streets, although it is in favour of the route becoming a cycleway.

The Council has also ruled out an idea to extend Grants Road between Grassmere and Cranford streets to link to the Northern Arterial. The 26 June decision notes, however, that this extension could be reviewed as part of a local collector road network after the Northern Arterial is built or if the Cranford Basin is rezoned for housing.

City Councillor Denis O’Rourke, chairman of the Sustainable Transport and Utilities Committee, says he would like people to understand three main points in relation to these decisions.

“In a nutshell it’s commitment, consultation and quality,” Cr O’Rourke says. “What we’re doing here is trying to give people certainty about the work we believe is needed, but at every stage along the way with all of these individual projects there will be opportunities for people to tell us what they think and there’s a real commitment to quality work — more space rather than less, with a focus on safety, pedestrian amenity, landscaping and built-in priority for buses.”