As I have mentioned previously, Dominion Road probably already has one of the better bus routes throughout all of Auckland. But it’s about to get even better! From February, there will be inter-peak buses going along this route every 5 minutes between Mt Roskill shops and the CBD. Yes, that’s a service at 5 minute frequencies.
Here’s a link to the new timetable, and an extract from it:
I am thoroughly impressed.
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I take it the new services are the 255 services that terminates at May Road. Interesting they don’t terminate at the shops itself — I guess they terminate at the depot instead? Looks like the off-peak pattern is now x:00 Lynfield / x:05 May Road / x:10 Blockhouse Bay / x:15 May Road and so on. Very good indeed!
I wonder why the last service of the day is a 267, given the penultimate service is also a 267. I would’ve expected the last service to be a 258 following the pattern.
Bit of a shame they did not clean up the flyer/flyover/limited-stop/etc mess. I wonder if ARTA/Metrolink has a justification for the current flyover/flyer schedules. I think it would be easier to just operate express buses that does not go via View Road, Esplande Road and Symonds Street. Instead all expresses would run express from mt roskill and take the flyover and stop at all stops on Queen Street to Britomart. But perhaps that is too logical for ARTA/Metrolink to implement! 🙂
All the more reason for this to become a tram route IMO!
Well that is certainly the next step if you have enough patrons to support 5 minute bus frequencies.
I’ll hazard a guess and say this is the first PT route in Auckland to offer 5 minute frequencies since 1956…
From memory ALL the tram routes had 5 minute frequencies as the service was provided as a PUBLIC GOOD…
I hope ARTA gets some good media coverage of this. Should make up for some of the service cuts we have seen on other routes.
@Jeremy Harris – don’t make me cry! Auckland had 5 min frequency tram routes throughout the city!? and today we’re told 10 min frequency is what we can look forward to in some distant future on the trains…
I’m pretty sure, I’ve seen a copy of the old Onehunga line timetable and it was 5 min frequencies from about 0600 to 2300 every work day and not scaled back too much for the weekends either… You need a tram for every 720m of track to run 5 minute frequencies… We had about 220 for 73 kms of track…
I’m a New Zealander living in the UK, specifically Edinburgh in Scotland. 5-minute frequencies on the main bus routes is pretty well standard here – and, even more than mode (bus v LRT) it is what makes public transport an effective mode.
If I had money to spend on Auckland transport, I would not be putting it into big-ticket items, but into road treatments (like that proposed for Dominion Rd), which enable both high frequency and relative high speed. That is what makes people use public transport; Edinburgh’s usage figures (>100m pax/year in a city of less than half a million) is almost as good as any European city.