Auckland’s Best Bus Route?

There was a question on the Campaign for Better Transport Forums the other day that really got me thinking. Basically, it was “what is Auckland’s highest frequency bus route?” I have expanded that a little bit in terms of this post, to “what is Auckland’s best bus route?” as a bit of a discussion point.

Clearly there is a distinction between the best bus route and the highest frequency bus route, although the two are also quite inter-linked. The 680/681 route between Downtown and the Botany/Flat Bush/Howick area has reasonably good frequencies (at least at peak times), but I wouldn’t necessarily call it a particularly good route – as very little of it is bus laned, and it is very very slow (taking well over an hour to complete the whole journey even during off-peak times). Conversely, some of the express buses that serve the North Shore during the peak times offer a pretty damn good service as they are able to use the busway, but are very much limited in the times they operate. In my mind, the best bus route should offer high frequencies and a fast ride. Let’s explore where they are.

Looking first at frequencies, there are many different routes in Auckland that provide pretty good peak hour frequencies, but then it falls away during the off-peak times and at weekends. Perhaps the North Shore buses refered to above are the most extreme examples of this – where you have a tonne of peak hour express buses, but then all the off-peak buses travel much slower and longer routes, come at lower frequencies and are generally just far less useful. As you can see in the image below, the peak time frequencies of the express buses add up to a very good service if you’re travelling from the North Shore to the CBD at peak times: However, if you’re travelling in the counter-peak direction or if you’re travelling during off-peak hours, the bus services available to this part of the North Shore area generally a lot poorer. This is clearly shown in the timetable below: In my mind, a good measure of what a bus route’s “true frequency” is, is how often buses run during the weekday inter-peak hours. This is often (although not always) the same frequency as what is run on Saturdays – and to me seems like the “base” for comparing bus routes against one another to find out which one truly is the best.

With that in mind, I think the routes which set the standard in Auckland are the Dominion Road buses, the Mt Eden Road buses and the Northern Express. All three of these routes operate 10 minute frequencies during that weekday inter-peak period, while they all pile masses of buses onto the road during the peak time. Here’s an example of the Mt Eden Road service timetable during the inter-peak hours: Other roads that probably also have excellent levels of service provision are Great North Road, Great South Road and Manukau Road. However, particularly with Great North and Great South roads, this comes as the result of the bunching of a whole pile of routes that spread out further along the route. Furthermore, the buses that operate along these routes are done so by a wide variety of companies – so in actual fact it’s likely that the frequency of the bus you’re actually trying to catch is a lot lower than would seem to be the case. That is why I don’t consider those two roads in particular to necessarily have as good a service as the three I have mentioned so far. Other possible routes with high frequencies could be Onewa Road, New North Road, Sandringham Road, Remuera Road and Tamaki Drive services. Perhaps the Link Bus could be included too, as its frequencies are pretty good.

Of course, the second part of analysing how good a bus route/service is, is to look at how fast it is, how good its prioritisation is and how clear/legible it is. Of course, it is generally the best routes that end up with the highest frequencies – because they are so popular – so there are many links with the other half of my analysis. It is this part of analysing Auckland’s bus routes that make Dominion Road and Northern Express services stand out above the rest. In particular, it is the length of these routes where buses have been given priority. Dominion Road has the most extensive bus lanes in Auckland City, and we all know that the Northern Express runs along the pretty fancy Northern Busway. In contrast, Mt Eden Road has pretty poor bus lanes that for some inexplicable reason only operate between 4.30pm and 5.30pm in the evening (even though every other bus lane in Auckland is at least 4-6pm).

In terms of choosing between the Northern Express and Dominion Road buses, there are pros and cons for each one I suppose in determining the number one. In favour of the Northern Express is the fact that it’s basically rapid transit – running along the busway or along bus shoulder lanes for most of its journey. The stations that it serves are very modern and of international standard. The frequencies are excellent – a bus every 4-5 minutes at peak time and no worse than every 10 minutes at off-peak times. Another advantage is that it begins its run at Britomart – so has good integration with other bus routes and the train system . On the down-side, as yet there has not been much integration between the Northern Busway and the intensification of land development around the busway stations – so the Northern Express is not much use unless you catch a feeder bus, drive or are dropped off at one of the station. By contrast the Dominion Road buses directly service people who can walk to the bus stops, making the route useful for a greater number of people. On the down-side for Dominion Road is that not all the route has bus lanes, that it doesn’t have anything quite as flash as the Northern Busway to run along, that there are some nasty bottlenecks around Balmoral and Valley Road, and that the service doesn’t terminate at Britomart, but way up around the Civic Centre. However, Dominion Road does probably offer better peak hour frequencies and provides a whole range of different route options – with some being express services, some only running from Mt Roskill, some only running from Valley Road and so on. As shown in the diagram below, quite an extraordinary number of buses arrive in the CBD along Dominion Road during the morning peak – 36 within 60 minutes by my count: In the end, I think I’ll call it a tie between those two.

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