Going for Housing Growth: Providing for urban development in the new resource management system

The NPS-UD requires Tier 1 councils to enable building heights of at least six storeys within at least a walkable catchment of existing and planned rapid transit stops.

Under the NPS-UD, a rapid transit stop means a place where people can enter or exit a rapid transit service, whether existing or planned. A ‘rapid transit service’ means any existing or planned frequent, quick, reliable and high-capacity public transport service that operates on a permanent route (road or rail) that is largely separated from other traffic. In practice, this definition only captures the Wellington and Auckland metropolitan rail network and Auckland’s Northern and Eastern busways.

There are several areas that are well-serviced by public transit and suitable for intensification that do not meet the current or proposed definition of rapid transit service. To address this, we propose to require major urban centres to also enable intensification across two new categories of current or planned ‘key public transport corridors’.

1. Category 1 – Councils would need to apply a standardised zone that enables at least six storeys within a walking catchment of ‘category 1 key public transport corridors’, which we propose would be defined broadly in line with the New Zealand Transport Agency’s One Network Framework classification of ‘spine’ corridors. Spine corridors would be strategically significant corridors where many frequent services operate and many public transport services merge together to create very high frequencies and overall passenger movement.
2. Category 2 – Councils would need to apply a standardised zone that enables at least three storeys within a walking catchment of ‘category 2 key public transport corridors’, which we propose would be defined broadly in line with the One Network Framework classification of ‘primary’ corridors. Primary corridors are strategic corridors where frequent public transport services operate, providing regular services across most of the day, seven days a week.

Councils would be responsible for determining which corridors meet the definition of each of these categories.