Cycleway cost skyrockets by an astonishing $25 million

Councillor Yani Johanson at Wednesday’s council meeting

The cost of Christchurch’s cycleways has soared by a staggering $25 million dollars, prompting a councillor to challenge staff on their ability to find cost-savings.

Council staff said the organisation now needed another $6.7 Million for the South Express cycleway, $6.0 million for the Nor’West Arc, $10.3 Million for the Northern Line, and $2.0 Million for the Heathcote Expressway.

The Government has already contributed $78 million of “shovel-ready” to the cycleways.

Council staff also admitted the cost shortfall could go beyond $25 million due to the risks associated with the project.

Council Head of Transport Lynette Ellis said the cost increases were due to a number of factors including ground conditions.

“We're often working through areas that have less and less stability underneath them.”

Ellis also blamed utility company upgrades and changes to utility networks which “cause us increased cost changes that will continue to increase into the future.

“We're also seeing real challenges around time frame uncertainty, the longer something takes to get to built, the more it costs and inflation factors that we are seeing at the moment which is unprecedented from what I've seen in the last 15 years in council.”

In a meeting on Wednesday Yani Johanson said “it just seems like so much money. It's almost like we've become numb to the cost.

“I appreciate we're in a difficult situation, but are we doing any work just to look at the reasonability of the cost associated with the cycleways because the budgets are very extensive?”

He also asked whether the council staff were looking at benchmarking the costs to ensure the city was getting value for money.

Council Transport head Lynette Ellis

Ellis replied “I would like to reinforce we're not numb to the costs. These are very big, very complex projects where we do a huge amount of work.

“We benchmark against the other major metros in the country that are delivering cycle projects.

“We were averaging something in the order of about three to three and a half million dollars a kilometre to deliver a cycleway project.

Auckland was costing about $4 million to four and a half million dollars a kilometre to deliver a cycling project Ellis said.

The council is expected to “find” the money in the next 10 year budget.