This week we have switched back to the Christchurch area maps due to the impeding local government elections. We are currently working with several candidates and preparing material in order to assist some of their campaigns, in association with Christchurch Transport Blog.
Because of this the Midland Line work has temporarily halted, although research at the local branch of Archives New Zealand has continued. We estimate approximately two more days of research at Archives will be sufficient to complete the Midland Line maps, but are unsure exactly when these maps will actually be ready.
We are taking the time to complete more of the historical maps of Christchurch as well as some of the other stuff we are doing so I have pulled up a number of Gimp projects and revised them as necessary to keep them within reasonable file sizes. For the Main North Line it is now split into one project that covers Addington and Riccarton along with Christchurch (from MSL) and a second one covering from Bryndwr to Ashley, previously it was all one project from Addington to Ashley.
For the Main South Line we have Lyttelton to Heathcote including Ferrymead in a project, then from Woolston to Waltham, then from Middleton to Hornby, and then from Islington to Rolleston. The reason Christchurch was put in with Addington going north to Riccarton was because we had Addington in two projects, one for the MNL and one for the MSL, which was an unwarranted duplication.The one we haven't started on really is Hornby to Lincoln, and it's likely we will take Hornby out of the MSL Gimp projects at this point and put it into the one for the Hornby Industrial Line.
It's timely to comment briefly about maps of local government boundaries. Linz Data Services does not have this type of map in the list of layers that can be downloaded through their site on Koordinates. However, Statistics New Zealand, another Government department, does have them through its Datafinder site, http://datafinder.stats.govt.nz also hosted on Koordinates. As a result we have taken the opportunity to download six layers together: Maori Constituency 2019, Constituency 2019, Community Board 2019, Regional Council 2019, Territorial Authority 2019 and Ward 2019. This information is needed in order to discover the boundaries of each of the wards for the Regional Council elections and in so doing, be able to assist certain candidates in the wards of the transport related issues in their constituency.
