After being closed for well over a year, the Grafton Bridge has finally reopened for buses between 7am and 7pm Monday to Friday, and for all traffic at other times. It is a critical part of the Central Connector project, which is also now technically complete.
From Auckland City’s website:
Grafton Bridge to reopen
From City Scene, published on 4 October, 2009.
A special civic ceremony to mark the reopening of the historic Grafton Bridge and completion of the Central Connector project will be taking place at 11am today, 4 October.
The mayor will commemorate the occasion with a ribbon cutting ceremony and unveiling of a new plaque on the bridge.
The event will be followed by an open day that is also part of the Auckland Heritage Festival, with heritage tours, live music and vintage vehicle displays.
Grafton Bridge is an important key in the Central Connector project. When fully operational, Central Connector will provide 65,000 Aucklanders each weekday with quicker, more reliable bus travel between Newmarket and the CBD. Grafton Bridge will reopen to traffic on 5 October, but will operate as a busway between 7am-7pm, weekdays. Emergency vehicles, cyclists, motorcyclists and pedestrians will have access at all times.
Now, as far as I know, bus services will slowly be shifted onto Grafton Bridge and Park Road, from their current routes. This process will start with the Link Bus from tomorrow, which will return to its old route of continuing up Symonds Street, left into Grafton Bridge and from then onto Park Road. I think that ARTA is avoiding shifting too many routes onto Park Road for now, as it is narrower than usual due to works relating to the construction of the Grafton Train Station and the double-tracking of the western line through that area.
I hope the Symonds Street bus lanes are fully operational from tomorrow onwards – as they are the biggest boost to public transport from the whole Central Connector project in my opinion.
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I wish the LINK bus didn’t have to dip into Symonds Street though, with the Central Connector therewill be lots of way to get to Newmarket and Downtown from University, the route of the LINK bus is slow and painful for me it usually takes me 45 minutes to get from the Hospital to Ponsonby Road and the route confuses a lot of people.
It is really far ahead of schedule which is great… It’ll be interesing to see the extent of the effect this has…
Yeah it’s been a while since I caught a bus along Symonds Street. Are the bus lanes fully operational yet? Are they making much of a difference?
Yeah they have been good until you reach wherever the work is going on and then there are some traffic snafu’s but when finished it’ll be fantastic I think… I hope they do a study after a while to measure it’s success…
Although it isn’t user pays so it is evil and communist…
I thought it WAS meant to be finished today? Not just the bridge opening, but the whole Central Connector being complete.
Really, it’s being reported as 3 months ahead of schedule…
Yeah, as in it’s finished now rather than in 3 months time. Or so I thought?
Sorry I see what you mean… I thought they were still doing some work on the Park Rd part (my bus doesn’t go down there) and that it was the bridge that was open 3 months ahead of schedule…
Yeah it’s been a while since I caught a bus along Symonds Street. Are the bus lanes fully operational yet? Are they making much of a difference?
I catch the LINK every weekday but are taking some time off to look after the kids so I don’t know what’s going on, It seemed to take so long for them to reseal the road and take those blooming cones away!
The bridge was the critical path of the project, and pretty much determined the opening time of the hole connection. However because of the 3 month ahead, other projects are now conflicting. But once these projects are finnished will be great. Brain Perrys (Division of Fletcher Construction) did a great job with the bridge. Funny that most of Fletchers projects are ahead at the moment. Maybe we should use them to build the CBD Rail Tunnel.
They finished the central connector three months early, which puts them three months ahead of the works around the road bridge at Grafton station. Hence there will be lane closures at the end of Park Rd for three months yet which prevents the Central Connector actually running at full capacity. So it is just the Link that will use it for the time being.
It might have to wait until there are further dedicated bus corridors or even the CBD tunnel to take up the role, but eventually I think it would be a good idea to re-route the link straight across K Rd and make it a true CBD orbital.
Aren’t Fletchers also doing the Victoria Park Tunnel project and Eden Park?
Maybe I will wander up to Symonds St some time this week and see what’s going on there.
Well I drove the length of Symonds Street this evening as I was in the area. It certainly is all finished with the bus lanes fully operational. It looks great, although it would be nice to distinguish better between the solid white line indicating the middle of the road and the solid white lines separating the bus lanes from the general traffic lanes.
It’s a tad confusing at first look.
Grafton Bridge is a bus lane 7.00am to 7.00pm Mon to Fri.
There are cars continually using the bridge between these hours (I work close to the bridge) and traffic officers are there most days giving tickets to those cars who break the rules.
Rather than having officers there, giving tickets to drivers who use it between these times, would it not be better to have good traffic signs so people don’t make this mistake?? If I did not work in the area, I also might not realise that the bridge is a bus lane and travel across it. Surely it’s just a matter of getting the signage right!!
Is the road surface painted green? If not it should be.
The signage seems pretty clear and obvious to me.
I’ve seen police officers (a sergeant on one occasion) on there handing out tickets a couple of times since it’s opened, which is good to see…
It would make sense to paint the pavement green. I am surprised that has not been done more for the whole Central Connector.
Really? I assumed being a project introducing full time buslanes through busy city streets they would have definitely painted them like buslanes.