Britomart bus terminal – a bit of a mess?

When the Britomart train station was built, the council somehow pulled off an impossible feat (you would think) and turned a public square (Queen Elizabeth II square, which admittedly was more of a wind tunnel than a square) into a road, well OK a road that only allow buses along it – but still basically a road. Perhaps it was the “feel-good” factor of opening Britomart train station which made this feat possible, or perhaps potential dissenters were quietened by promises of a fully integrated transport interchange where one could step off a train or ferry and catch a bus to any corner of Auckland they pleased – while still being right in the heart of the city.

Well, looking at the location of all the bus stops around Britomart I would have to say that the promise has not been fulfilled. A good number of buses still begin and end their runs a long way from Britomart (for example all New North Road, Sandringham Road and Dominion Road services), while even those buses that do go right the way into Britomart have their stops splattered all over that part of town. Someone noted recently that if you simply wanted to catch a bus from Britomart to Onehunga you could do so from one of three different stops depending on the actual route you took. Furthermore, of course the three stops weren’t located near each other so you don’t have the opportunity to quickly browse the timetables at the stops to work out which bus you should catch.

The map below shows clearly how messy the area is: If we look at it by colour, the dark blue stops are for North Shore buses, the green stops for West Auckland, the light-blue for isthmus routes, the burgundy for south Auckland routes and the yellow for places out east. But it’s not like they’re even being grouped, apart from the North Shore buses to some extent. The bus I catch each day leaves from stop D20 – and it’s the only bus route all day long that leaves from the stop in this prime location. Similarly, stop D6 I think is only used for City Circuit buses – what a waste as it’s right outside both the ferry building and the train station. To make matters worse, as I mentioned above, there are a number of further bus termini sprinkled around the rest of the CBD, as shown in the map below:
Surely we can do better than this. From my estimates there are ten trunk routes that link the CBD with the rest of Auckland – although even then many of these routes meet up on streets like Albert Street and Symonds Street:

1) Fanshawe Street – North Shore
2) Victoria Street – Herne Bay/Westmere (should be extended to Pt Chev if ARTA had any brains)
3) Queen St/K Road – Western Bays services (015,025,035,045 etc.)
4) Albert St/K Road – West Auckland Buses along Great North Road
5) New North & Sandringham roads services – exit city via Symonds St
6) Dominion & Mt Eden roads services – exit city via Symonds St
7) Manukau Road buses – exit city via Symonds St
8 ) Great South Road buses – includes buses to south Auckland and Howick & Eastern buses (via Symonds Street)
9) Remuera Road buses
10) Tamaki Drive buses (via Quay Street).

Some of these “main routes” service a LOT of buses (like North Shore) so therefore having a single stop would be difficult. Same with all the Great South Road services, and also any stop that had to service both Mt Eden Road and Dominion Road services.

However, I am sure with a bit of clever thinking we could work towards having 10 main departure points of the CBD – based on these ten main trunk routes. If we could get bus lanes on Queen Street then most, if not all, bus services would be able to enter and leave the city via a street with extended bus lane hours: Fanshawe, Albert, Queen or Symonds.

I will delve into possible ways of reorganising the bus stops and bus routes of the CBD in future posts (as I have done a bit in the past) but for now I’m actually quite curious to hear a few ideas, as I’m really not sure how this mess can be sorted out effectively!

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