Aaron Keown: Christchurch City Councillor on KiwiRail's $6.5 million safety upgrade to the Heathcote Expressway crossing

Christchurch City Council is continuing to push back against KiwiRail's multimillion dollar safety improvement requirement, which has forced the closure of a cycleway. 

The freight transport company says a crossing on the Heathcote Expressway needs $6.5 million in safety upgrades because of the cycleway 

That could take two years.  

Councillor Aaron Keown told Mike Hosking he assumes they're referring to the gate systems. 

He says it's odd given the path doesn't cross there but runs beside the rail line. 

Keown says Mayor Phil Mauger has written to the appropriate ministers. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Got an issue in christ which council steering down a
six and a half million dollar problem. That's the price
that Key we Rail have put on safety improvements to
have could cycle away. Now the crossing poses are one
in one thousand and three year risk. I've seen this
injury or death. At no point, by the way, does
the one and a half kilometer cycle away cross the tracks.
So now they're facing closure anyway the city council Aaron

(00:22):
kewans with us, Aaron, Morning.

Speaker 2 (00:24):
Morning, Mike.

Speaker 1 (00:25):
So literally where is this A is this on railway land?
Hence they've got some sort of say in this.

Speaker 2 (00:32):
No, the problem is we're near via crossing, like you
said in the lead. And what triggers these upgrades nowadays
is if you bring any new people to a crossing point.
So if there was already one thousand people a day
crossing there, that's all good. But if you go to
one thousand and five, you've now triggered an upgrade, or

(00:54):
you've brought new people to the area, so and so forth.
So we then have to pay for the upgrade because
we put the infrastructure there that drew the people in.

Speaker 1 (01:03):
What's the upgrade required? If you were going to spend
six and a half million dollars, what would.

Speaker 2 (01:06):
You build I'm assuming for that much money. Thy meaning
the whole gate system that allows pedestrians and stuff to
go in and out through there, which is kind of
odd because the cyclists aren't crossing there. No, like said,
you don't even go over this level crossing, you go
beside it.

Speaker 1 (01:24):
What's the trigger point in getting how close there must
be a trigger point if you are if you're not
crossing it, you must be close, like within five meters
you're close enough to trigger it. Is that how that works?

Speaker 2 (01:37):
No? My understanding is that other people are going to
go across it. And the number we heard from some
of the local kids and stuff the other day is
that three people now use that crossing to get onto
the cycle.

Speaker 1 (01:48):
Way, So that one hundred and three year it's not
like a storm, a one and one hundred year storm.
Is it the one thousand and three that's the three
that triggers it to be a problem. God, this is
studio people do.

Speaker 2 (02:00):
But that modeling that one in one thousand year is
that when you take all of the depths every year
and you divide it by how many things and how
many people are crossing. That's the number you come up with,
but only just when you look at level crossings across
the whole country. It's only three point one people a
year killed at level crossings. Other people die walking on

(02:21):
tracks and other things like that, but at level crossings
where all these upgrades are, and there's thousands needed across
the country, it's going to treat them like this. So
now you're talking kings of billions of dogs. You might
as well shut railways.

Speaker 1 (02:32):
What are you going to do about this? Apart from
putting well there Film.

Speaker 2 (02:37):
Major has written to the appropriate ministers. I think the
real suggestion is getting them actually down onto the site
to have a little bit of the site and go
how ludicrous.

Speaker 1 (02:46):
Are you dealing with someone going from Wellington?

Speaker 2 (02:49):
Yeah? Yeah, we're dealing with with railway types at the
moment who don't seem to want to They don't want
to help facilitate the outcome.

Speaker 1 (02:58):
All right, well we'll stay in touch with the That's
a cool job, isn't it In life writing to Kiwi
rail dealing with crap like that. It's just a lot
of the people use that track by the way to
go to limit High, which is the old Elma Mata,
which by the way, is not called limit High anymore
because they all went woke and changed it. But some

(03:18):
of us who went still, how was it not called
the Husking Memorial High. Question of the morning Glynn.

Speaker 2 (03:26):
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