The Christchurch City Council is the local territorial authority for the City of Christchurch, including Banks Peninsula.
Christchurch has the second largest population of all New Zealand territorial authorities and is the largest urban centre in the South Island. Christchurch City has a land area of 141,260 hectares with around 70 percent of this land located in Banks Peninsula.
Christchurch’s terrain is a rich mix of natural features and urban spaces that invite people to live, work, and play in harmony with the landscape. The city stretches across the flat expanse of the Canterbury Plains, framed by the Port Hills and the Southern Alps in the distance, while the Avon River meanders through parks, cycleways, and neighbourhoods. Coastal areas like New Brighton and Sumner offer sandy beaches for swimming, surfing, and fishing, while the nearby hills provide trails with sweeping views across the plains to the ocean. Wetlands, estuaries, and regenerated green spaces are woven into the urban fabric, attracting walkers, birdwatchers, and picnickers. This combination of accessible outdoor spaces and diverse terrain makes Christchurch a city where nature is part of everyday life.
Christchurch City Council’s Long Term Plan includes key performance measures related to access to Council-provided services, such as parks, green space, libraries, as well as other key non-Council provided services (e.g. food shopping, education, employment and health).
A key high level service within the Council’s Transport Activity Long Term Plan is as follows:
“Access: Our networks and services support access for all, provide travel choices and contribute to a prosperous, liveable and healthy city – our goal is for our transport networks to enable people and freight to move freely and to enable genuine choice of modes for all. Critically, in support of our climate adaptation and de-carbonising transport plans, we want to help support a city where more people have easy access to essential daily needs in their neighbourhood by a short walk or cycle ride - or for needs further away, by convenient efficient public transport services.”
In order to achieve this, accurate walking and cycling network data is critical. However, because the Council’s existing transport datasets (for walking and cycling networks) were incomplete and out of date, it was difficult to correctly calculate travel distances or journey times from residential addresses to community services.
As a result, in many cases, citizen access/proximity to essential daily needs was unclear or unknown, and as the old saying goes, “you can’t manage what you can’t measure.” Most importantly, this lack of accurate and up to date data was holding the Council back in their aim to improve outcomes for all citizens.
The goal was to have accurate and current multimodal transport data for walking and cycling networks - data that could be relied on for analysis, planning and reporting purposes.
Examples of the measures the Council need to report on include:
“Increase access within 15 minutes to key destination types by walking (to at least four of the five basic services: food shopping, education, employment, health, and open spaces).” (10.5.41)
“Increase the infrastructure provision for active and public modes." (10.5.42)
“80% of urban residential properties are <500m from a park (any type of park except a utility park) at least 3000m2 in size." (6.8.1.3)
The proximity and access measures above are reported on annually and are vital not only for planning and reporting, but ultimately for improved community outcomes.
The Christchurch City Council catchment area is large, with a population and asset infrastructure that is widely distributed.
They needed a solution that would allow them to meet the objectives and measures contained within the Council’s Transport Activity Long Term Plan, as they relate to access to specific Council-provided and other key non-Council services.
In order to achieve this, the Council determined they needed accurate, comprehensive and feature rich, transport data focused on walking and cycling networks, data that would work seamlessly with, overlay and enhance their existing data layers.
The Council uses Esri’s ArcGIS platform as it allows for the easy consumption and overlay of multiple datasets to create the deep insights that the Council requires.
Christchurch City Council acquired NationalMap's “Multimodal Routing Network For ArcGIS” as the solution.
NationalMap's “Multimodal Routing Network for ArcGIS” enables accurate estimation of journey times, with optimal routing efficiency. Along with walking and cycling networks, the routing data provides information on road types, surface, average speeds, direction, turn restrictions, as well as one-way streets and roundabout coding.
Importantly, the network is built on highly accurate elevation data that enables realistic journey times in different terrain.
When used in conjunction with Routing/Drive-time software, the module also provides turn-by-turn directions for field staff or customers, as well as driving/walking distances and travel times to reach services/customers.
NationalMap's “Multimodal Routing Network for ArcGIS” provided the Council with a complete, current, and highly detailed picture of travel networks across all transport modes - including walking and cycling. Integrated into the Council’s existing Esri ArcGIS platform, the data now underpins performance measurement, planning, and analysis.
For many years, Christchurch City Council has obtained all of the location and “Points of Interest” data they needed from NationalMap, their trusted source for this information.
With the addition of NationalMap’s Multimodal Network data, the Council now has a truly accurate address-level understanding of walking/cycling travel times, distances, and access to Council run services and other Points of Interest (such as schools, supermarkets and health centres).
All this results in:
Improved accuracy in annual reporting, planning and policy development;
The ability to monitor changes in access over time and evaluate progress; and
Tools to identify areas for new connections or services (such as green space or recreational facilities).
The combination of authoritative geospatial data and GIS capability has enabled Christchurch City Council to confidently improve transport and service access for its communities, all without the need for constant inhouse data curation, maintenance and quality control.
“We keep choosing NationalMap data because we value having a fundamental “one source of truth” dataset underpinning our analysis and reporting. No other provider comes close in terms of the accuracy and currency that we need to do our analysis.
When it comes to NationalMap's “Multimodal Routing Network For ArcGIS”, because we use so much NationalMap data already, the decision was easy. We value the assurance of knowing we are using the best data available to enhance outcomes for our communities.”
Aimee Martin Research Analyst, Christchurch City Council
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