Urban street design

ViaStrada's strategic walking and cycling network review in 2024 identified Leith St as a secondary cycle route with a suggestion that it will be a low-speed shared zone. NZTA’s current SH88 project includes design changes to Frederick St and St Andrew St. Both roads intersect with Leith St which means this project presents an opportunity to implement parts of a future Leith St cycle route.

Healthy cities and towns that provide safe and comfortable places to live, work, enjoy and connect ask for a street network that supports this. So, this means streets that service all users of various modes, and streets that stimulate the adoption of sustainable transport. But how do you organise the competing demands for space on our urban road corridors? How do you make streets more accessible to everyone?

Roadway art is a subset of street art that is marked within the roadway, i.e. where vehicles travel. In a nutshell roadway art is any marking on the roadway that is not considered a ‘traffic control device’. ViaStrada was part of a team that prepared guidance for the NZ Transport Agency as part of their Tactical Urbanism suite. 

ViaStrada designed the internal roads for Nazareth House, a retirement village and healthcare complex in the Christchurch suburb of Sydenham. The brief was to create a slow speed environment where drivers felt like guests, so that elderly residents walking along or crossing the roads felt safe.  The majority of trips around the site will be by residents and their guests walking about, the client wanted a street environment that reflected this.

The Kaiapoi Town Centre Plan was published in 2011 by the Waimakariri District Council (WDC). This plan was developed by WDC staff and a consultant team including ViaStrada. The plan built on the Kaiapoi Town Centre Revitalisation Plan that had been under development since 2008 and responded to the restoration and development requirements of the town centre following the Canterbury earthquake in September 2010. The Plan considered Kaiapoi town centre as it stood then, identified issues that needed to be addressed and set out a vision for the future.

Following the 4 September 2010 earthquake, the Waimakariri District Council formed an Infrastructure Recovery Unit (IRU) from local professional experts to develop new designs and rebuild plans for the damaged infrastructure in Kaiapoi and the nearby beach settlements of Pines Beach and Kairaki.

ViaStrada has provided transport planning advice to the Christchurch City Council with respect to the transport-related provisions in the Christchurch City Plan to support the Central City South Master Plan.  The master plan was adopted by Council in May 2009 and established the main characteristics (desired outcomes) that Council is seeking to encourage for the precinct.

Christchurch City Council has an extensive Construction Standards Specification (CSS) document. ViaStrada staff were engaged to lead a team of Council officers through the development of a new standard detail for intersection thresholds.

A little bit of effort invested into these standard details will subsequently save valuable time on individual intersection designs. The CCC team was impressed and the next standard will be tackled soon.