Buses are, by a very long stretch, the most popular form of public transport in Auckland. I think around 80% of public transport trips in Auckland are on the bus. However, generally bus travel is pretty unappealing when compared with travelling either by train or by car – because it is generally so slow. I think this contributes quite significantly to Auckland’s very low level of public transport use. Along various corridors where bus travel has been “sped up”, like Dominion Road and Onewa Road, the results are significant. Around 50% of people using the Dominion Road corridor at peak times are on public transport, while for Onewa Road I think the total is around 40%. Considering that across Auckland as a whole less than 10% of people use public transport, there’s obviously something that these corridors are doing right, which Auckland could learn from and expand to other corridors.
The obvious one is speeding up the buses – both through smart-card ticketing (faster boarding times) and through more bus lanes (allowing buses to bypass congested traffic). Making a route more “legible” (obvious) I think is also important: both the Dominion Road and Onewa Road bus routes are highly obvious – due to the bus/transit lanes and due to a pretty straight arterial carrying the buses along it. Hopefully over the next few years Auckland will expand its bus lanes and we will end up with integrated smart-card ticketing – thereby improving the speed of the buses across the network and making public transport a more attractive alternative to driving.
One further way of achieving improved legibility of Auckland’s buses, as well as making them travel faster, could be to adopt – in some form or another – something similar to what Sydney is doing with their “Metrobus” initiative. Sydney’s Metrobus services differ fairly significantly from traditional bus services in the following ways:
- The buses are generally larger than your typical bus, so there’s more capacity.
- The buses run at relatively high frequencies throughout the day, so you don’t need to worry about a timetable.
- The buses stop less frequently than a typical bus, but have their stops made more obvious – kind of like a train system in this regard.
- No tickets are sold on the bus – you buy them “prepay” at bus stops.
- The route is made very obvious, kind of like a train system again.
Here’s a map of the first Metrobus route to be initiated in Sydney, route 10:
Whilst this route has been somewhat criticised as a cop-out to not building the railway line that probably should be built along this route in Sydney, I think that it’s still a model that could be put to work quite well in Auckland. I’m a big fan of the fact that it runs from one side of the city into the CBD and then out to the other side of the city. This means that people who want to make cross-town trips don’t need to change buses. A map showing other proposed Metrobus routes is here, with five different routes – all running into the CBD and then out the other side, being proposed.
So, if we were to implement this kind of idea in Auckland, how could it work? I think to start with we would want a clear north-south route and a clear east-west route. In terms of the exact routes, perhaps it would be smart to be guided by the two potential future metro rail routes identified in discussion on the Regional Land Transport Strategy? This would be a north-south route from Albany to Mt Roskill, probably via the busway, Symonds Street and Dominion Road. Most of this route already has dedicated bus lanes so it could be initiatied pretty quickly (in fact if you just decided to amalgamate the Northern Express with one of the Dominion Road bus routes you could almost do it tomorrow). The east-west route would be a bit trickier as you would first need to decide where to start it in the south/east – Manukau City, Botany or Glen Innes? I would perhaps go for Botany for now, but for it to actually work a lot of bus lanes would need to be built along Ti Rakau Drive and then between Panmure and Remuera Road. In the west I think it could follow Great North Road and then Carrington Road before terminating at Unitec.
Clearly, in the longer run some of these routes should be replaced by rail services: most obviously in the far east between Panmure (or Glen Innes) and Manukau City via Botany, as well as having the Northern Busway eventually turned into a railway line. But in the meanwhile I think having some kind of Metrobus system would provide a higher-quality public transport option for Aucklanders. It’s something that could be relatively easily and cheaply (at least when compared to building railway lines) initiated, and it could be up and running pretty quickly.
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I like the metrobus idea (although for Sydney I believe light rail would be more appropriate.
I don’t live in Auckland, and have only been to Auckland for one week in the last 10 years (I know this is embarrasing) and only used trains where I was there (and they are a fair bit worse than Wellingtons), so I really don’t know what the bus system is like. I do know that in Wellington the Lambton Quay-Courtenay Palce route has bus lanes (often 2 way) almost its full length (with the odd gap) and it works really well. The only problem is that there are a few too many buses using this route, and sometimes you get small traffic jams with all the buses, and as the bus stops are in the bus lanes, when one bus stops, all the other buses behind have to stop too, sometimes creating lines of 4-5 buses stuck behind the stopping one. Creating a similar network of bus lanes down Queen Street (perhaps closing it to all non-bus traffic, with minor exceptions for taxis, emergency vechiles, and cyclists) could do something similar
I really don’t know what bus priority measures are in place in Auckland (other than the Northern busway). Perhaps you could do a map showing bus lane network in Auckland (Wellington has a few in the suburbs, but are often short bits of road not part of a real network. There is a bus tunnel similar to the Mt Vic tunnel, but very little for busses in the Hutt Valley and Porirua.
It would be simple to link some of the buses that enter the city via Albert or Queen St with routes that come down Symonds or Quay St to create some cross city linkages. Basically you’d have a bunch of long routes that kink through the CBD via Britomart, although it could be quite time consuming to pass through the city.
Extending the NEX to Newmarket via the Central Connector (taking in the universities, hosptial precinct etc) is a complete no-brainer and they should do that the second the central connector is finished.
I definitely agree that normal bus routes should be linked together so that people can use them for cross-town purposes. But this goes a bit further than that – with all ticket sales having to be pre-paid and having wider spaced stops. I would prefer Metrobuses to have bus lanes to run along as much as possible too.
Extending the Northern Express to Newmarket is a no brainer and I hope it happens once the Central Connector is finished. Another no-brainer should be to extend the Northern Express to terminate at Westfield Albany rather than in the middle of a field at its northern end.
Nicholas O’Kane, there’s a list of Auckland’s bus lanes here: http://www.aucklandcity.govt.nz/auckland/Transport/buses/lanes.asp
They are somewhat extensive, although more would be better!
Sounds similar to the B-line system that operates in Vancouver on a number of bus routes,
– Has stops distinct from the regular service,
– Is usually run with articulated bus and trailer sets
– Usually run on the busiest routes ( To/From major transit interchanges and destinations)
Yeah somewhat similar to B-Line services. The B-Line services have been really popular in Vancouver, so popular that it’s likely the routes will actually be turned into rail (one of the B-Line routes pretty closely follows the route of the soon to be opened Canada Line I think while the east-west 99 service has a rail line planned for it).
Thanks for the link. The map at http://www.aucklandcity.govt.nz/auckland/maps/ is really good and if you click on buslanes gives a really good map. Unfortuantely most are only one way, so some fixing this may be required.
The central connector plan looks really good. Once this is finnished you will have better bus priority measures than Wellington.
Are there any bus lanes in the Manaku or Waitakere city’s, or North Shore (other than the busway)? If so, maybe the supercity can link them up to provide a citywide buslane network (if the Waterview project can be altered so as to include buslanes on the Waterview section of Great North Road this could help. So to if instead of the 4th Southward lane on the Newmarket viaduct project, a Southern busway could be built from Newmarket to Greenlane.
There are very very few bus lanes outside Auckland City. North Shore City has gone down the “transit lane” path – allowing buses and cars with either 2 or 3 (usually 3) people in them to use that lane. It works pretty well on Onewa Road, not sure about Constellation Drive, Akoranga Drive or any other places they use them.
Waitakere City has been surprisingly poor in their limited use of bus lanes. I would have thought that they would be appropriate along stretches of Lincoln Road, Te Atatu Road and Great North Road. A blot on their generally pretty good (from an environmental perspectively) record.
Regarding Manukau City, their council hates public transport and loves roads. I think there’s a 20m long bus lane on one bit of Pakuranga Road. Otherwise nothing, so pretty pathetic there.
Regarding the Southern Motorway, what NZTA should do is set aside one of the lanes to be a T2 lane (allowing buses and vehicles with 2 or more occupants) during peak hour. That would encourage car pooling and speed up any express bus services that use the Southern Motorway. It could be particularly useful for Howick and Eastern services, which can take hours (literally) to complete their journeys.
Same as Wellington. Good bus lanes in Wellington City. Nothing in Hutt Valley or Porirua (not one that I know of).
Hopefully the Super City can change things. I consider the Supercity a real force for good POTENTIALLY for public transport. A 5% rate rise across the whole city could provide a lot more money for one project than a 5% rate rise in just Auckland could. This might actually allow the CBD loop e.t.c to be built, whereas it might not for a long time otherwise. Just hope to get the right people elected to the Supercity council.
Yes that is right regarding the super-city. Hopefully the Regional Transport Agency will be pretty powerful taking over from ARTA and adding in the transport departments of all the curren councils. ARTA does a great job within the very limited funding that it has, so an enhanced, enlarged ARTA with most cash should be great.
Having the same entity proposing bus lanes as that which will USE them should also be good. I fully expect a significant roll out of bus lanes across Auckland over the next few years.
Joshua. You should be studying the Los Angeles Metro Rapid as a model. Metrobus is a compromised product because not all the relevant agencies are committed to it. It’s really just a red bus that operates much like a lot of other buses; the brand happened before the product was sufficiently differentiated, and that’s always a cause for concern.
LA Metro Rapid was a collaboration between the transit agency and the City of Los Angeles. It includes wide stop spacing and extensive signal proirity, and it really works.
The real challenge of creating strong frequent bus routes is that you have to restructure the network around them, which Sydney is failing to do. And to do that, you have to sell people on frequent connections where they now have mediocre through service.
Hi Jarrett, I don’t have personal experience of the Sydney system and it certainly appears to be a bit of a half-ass solution, but at the same time I think there are plenty of good aspects to it. Like faster boarding times and faster travel times (my two main problems with bus travel). The frequencies sound pretty rubbish though – 10 minutes at peak, 15 minutes off peak and 20 minutes on weekends. Hardly “turn up and go” frequencies in my opinion.
I shall look into the LA Metro Rapid a bit more, sounds like something pretty close to BRT? Auckland’s Northern Busway has been a pretty huge success (still getting 25% monthly increases in patronage compared to last year) so extending that success story is likely to be quite politically feasible.
The problem I see with most of Auckland’s bus routes is that there isn’t enough “branding” for the routes themselves. I think it would be a big step forwards to have say ten “higher-level” routes throughout the city which offered something similar to what the Sydney Metrobus (or perhaps more like the LA Metro Rapid). A higher quality, faster bus service.
LA Metro rapid is frequent buses mostly in mixed traffic but stopping only every 1 km or so with strong signal priority. Distinctive red fleet and stops. Dramatic success.
It actually sounds like such a system would be even easier to implement in Auckland than I had thought then. I guess the advantages of having fewer stops (faster journeys) outweighs the disadvantages (people having to walk further to the bus stops), or is this managed by having Rapid and Local buses running along the same routes?
Signal priority is definitely needed. It was promised for Auckland a while back, has anything ever come of it?
Good question George – I don’t know. I think the Link buses have signal priority gear in them, not sure about other buses.