Innes Council Candidate Calls Draft Transport Plan "uninspiring and flawed"

“It might be a draft plan but we should be starting as we mean to go on.”

That from Ali Jones who is running in the Innes ward, one of the city areas that has been heavily impacted by an increase in traffic volumes over the last couple of years.

The Christchurch Northern Corridor has seen thousands of cars head into St Albans and Edgeware from north Canterbury, with smaller residential streets also being hit by an increased number of vehicles.

“What struck me about the draft transport plan is it has focussed on reducing the number of cars on our roads and increasing the number of cyclists and pedestrians, almost solely as a solution to the Co2 emission problem and the effects on our environment,” says Jones. “Those are two good ideas however there are many tools in the box that this plan doesn’t include.”

With a number of council, government and ecan documents referenced in the plan, Jones says it is “quite a read”, hence the time it has taken her to go through the draft plan and consider the content.

“There is no doubt we need to do more regarding emissions and do so urgently, to make sure our world doesn’t implode from environmental pressures” she says. “The CCC draft transport plan doesn’t go far enough in my view. The Government’s draft transport plan is actually very good and acknowledges and raises many more critical issues and possible solutions than our own plan.”

Ali Jones says she believes the CCC draft transport plan has locked in the ideological positions of a number of the authors, positions that they have promoted consistently for a number of years.

“Right from the first couple of pages, under the visions and goals, it is clear that public transport means buses and there’s no other innovative thinking around creating more PT choice and accessibility for people. The draft plan also ignores one of the key pillars in the Government’s draft plan which is prosperity. Our city and people need to thrive while we urgently address the environmental issues but that seems to have been ignored,” says Ali Jones.

The CCC draft plan says transport is the biggest contributor to emissions in Christchurch however very little is said about road freight which is a significant contributor.

“In fact the draft plan says long haul freight is not a focus of the plan. Why not? It should be in there with recommendations around getting freight onto rail, and reducing co2 emissions as soon as possible. The authors have cherry picked from documents to produce a plan that fits their ideologies,” says Ali Jones.

Jones adds that criticisms of the plan should not be an indication that she doesn’t support urgent action to address effects on the environment; in fact she believes this plan doesn’t go far enough.

“The CCC draft plan is not courageous enough; it is not focused on what’s actually causing the problems and what tools we have (including passenger rail on current tracks) to address the problems. I really hope everyone submits on this and calls out the bias and lack of inspiration and innovation in this plan so that we can better position our city and region to be far more environmentally resilient as soon as possible.”