To continue my process of working through Auckland’s myriad of bus routes (having previously looked at Sandringham Road, New North Road and the Eastern Isthmus) I’ve today turned my attention to the part of Auckland where I actually live: the Western Bays of Auckland City. As you can see in the map below, the current system of bus routes is highly complicated, and perhaps is made worst of all by a rather annoying habit of running different service patterns during weekdays as are run in evenings and on weekends.
I have followed a similar process to what I did for the Eastern Isthmus, although fortunately the current route system in this part of Auckland isn’t quite such a mess, and it’s a little bit more obvious about where the routes should go. However, as I noted above there are still some rather annoying parts to the existing system: like why is there no bus linking Pt Chevalier and Westmere? Why do we distinguish between a 004 and a 005? How much value do we really get out of the 015 bus considering it follows other routes for about 90% of its length… and finally, what on earth is that 011 doing???
This part of Auckland is relatively uninfluenced by the Rapid Transit Network, although there is potential for a number of its routes to interchange with the railway system at Grafton station. The green line in the map below shows where the rail system is in comparison to the area we’re looking at:
As we don’t have much of an RTN to play with in this part of Auckland, the real backbone to our network is going to be the radial “Quality Transit Network” (QTN) routes. I have two main routes for this part of Auckland, which generally follow the isthmus wide route map I developed a couple of months back. There are two key radial corridors through this part of Auckland, so it makes sense to have a bus route along both of them. Bus lanes might be necessary along parts of Meola Road, and could also be implemented fairly easily in Jervois Road (which is a very wide road for its rather modest traffic flows).
By merely combining the existing frequencies of the Herne Bay and Pt Chevalier buses, you could get close to 10 minute off-peak frequencies along QTN number 1 on weekdays, and not much worse than a bus every 15-20 minutes on weekends. Peak frequencies would obviously be even higher. On QTN number two you would have a mass of buses from New Lynn via Great North Road, and some buses from further west that would have used SH16. So you would have excellent frequencies.
To overlay with the radial buses, there would be a number of cross-town routes, which a shown in the map below and generally fit in with what I have previously mapped in my isthmus wide system. 
Probably the main change is to crosstown route number 1, which in this map I have sent via Williamson Ave (so that road has a good bus service) and also via Karangahape Road rather than Newton Road, so that it can serve this southern part of the CBD. I’ve also popped in the Link Bus to show how that would integrated with the rest of the network.
The last piece in the puzzle is filling that gap in the middle, via a Local Connector Network bus that would run along Richmond Road and then also serve Freemans Bay. The route is somewhat annoyingly higgledy-piggledy, but I think that can’t be helped, and through this one route we effectively combine the current Richmond Road buses with the 015 service. 
All up I think it works pretty well. If we exclude the Link Bus we basically only have five main routes: two crosstown, two radial and one LCN. Even just combining existing resources would enable fairly decent frequencies along all these routes. It does seem a lot simpler.
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I would be tempted to deviate a bit from the network effect and run crosstown route 1 down to Britomart and back in the middle of its trip to allow a transferless journey to the CBD (which route 035 currently provides). For such short journeys needing to make a transfer can be a psychological barrier as much as a physical one. In the long term, once the CBD rail tunnel is built, I prefer your original proposal of running croostown route 1 along newton road for a convenient rail connection.
Why not straighten out the LCN a bit and make it another radial? I.e. get three largely parallel routes servicing the area, intesected by the three crosstown routes.
For example, run it along Wellington, Cook or Wellesley St to head down Queen St rather than looping back up to K Rd.
And perhaps extend it along Old Mill and Motions Rd to Pt Chev?
hear hear
I did very much consider running via Wellington, Cook or Wellesley street into the CBD but there is a lot of existing demand between Queen Street and K Road, and I have ripped out many of the other routes that currently serve the purpose (like the 015 and the 045). Also, getting a bus from Wellington Street to somewhere useful in the CBD is quite tricky.
I would extend QTN 1 to Pt Chev shops as I would expect this would be a hub, with access to the NW busway.
Also I would keep QTN 2 as a local service terminating at Pt Chev, with buses from further afield running on Gt North Road being limited stop services – maybe stopping at Western Springs, Grey Lynn, Arch Hill and Newton only.
Good idea to extend red QTN 1 to the shops, the advantages would outweigh the disadvantages in terms of connectivity to other routes. Regarding QTN 2, I guess you could have a mix of routes – my idea for this is that it would be a New Lynn-Britomart service, thereby providing good service to Waterview as well as this area. I think that Waterview would need such service.
The Gt North Road frequencies are already quite good, I take these buses every day in counterflow to the general commuter traffic (out to Grey Lynn in the morning, back to CBD in the evening).
My gripes are with the terrible weekend services and the annoyingly unintegrated lines that service the route, so effectively a third to half of the buses that service my bus stop refuse to let me board with my monthly pass.
Any simplifcation of bus routes will certainly have to address those issues before it has a hope in hell.
How about something across Bond St or Newton Gully? Surely I am not the only person who finds these two roads some of the most useful in the area…
I think they should re-route Sandringham Rd buses over Bond St and along Great North to the city (Down Albert or Queen), instead of up New North to Symonds St.
New North already has it’s own buses, plus those of Dominion and Mt Eden join along the way. No need to stick four busy corridors along the same street yet leave Bond St empty.
That would be good for those living in West Auckland and working at the one of the many offices in the upper and west CBD, like the ARC for example. At the moment these people are not well served by PT so an easy transfer from rail at Kingsland with no cost penalty would be great.
Lots of people on Sandringham Road route would want to access the university though, and accessing parts of the CBD around the ARC building from Symonds Street routes aren’t too long a walk via K Road and Pitt Street.
That’s true, but plenty of the would prefer direct access the Queen St valley too, including some of those coming up New North Rd.
The beauty of having the Sandringham buses head across Bond St and down to Albert St means that people on both routes have the option of transferring to the other to get where they want to go. You can’t do that when both routes run the same way through town.
Admin why does Richmond Road need to be a LCN when the 015 and the 024/5 already have 20 minute frequencies during the day, albeit the 015 is shorter than the 025 but 15 minute frequencies could be achieved without any extra investment and with a bit of extra investment could be 10 minute frequencies?
It’s only an LCN to the extent that its route is fairly higgledy-piggledy and wouldn’t have the bus lanes that I think a QTN would generally have. Frequency wise, 10 minute services doesn’t seem out of the question.