By the sounds of it, last night’s first big test of the transport upgrades made to Eden Park worked pretty well. Before the Four National League games yesterday I went and had a look at how things have turned out.
Perhaps the biggest change since I was last there is the completion of the southbound bus lane along Sandringham Road:
For much of the past year this bus lane (on the opposite side of the road to where I took the photo) has been under construction – and it has been a pretty tricky job as a slice had to be taken off the properties (with nice new fences and walls built for them) and even a couple of houses required removal. The thing I like about that part of the upgrade is that people will benefit enormously from it at other times to simply big games at Eden Park. We should see significant time savings for people catching Sandringham Road buses now that the bus lanes have been significantly extended.
The width of the Kingsland Railway Station’s platforms has also been extended and extra stairways added to give people more options for getting to and from the platforms. One really useful improvement is that trains after the big games load passengers from both the two platforms, meaning that a lot of people don’t have to get over (or under) the tracks to access city-bound trains:
The amount the platform has been widened is pretty clear from the two different shades of concrete. It was pretty narrow before!
The underpass, travelling underneath the tracks and providing an alternative to the overpass, has also been completed and brought up to a reasonably good standard. It was open yesterday afternoon and I hope it will remain open at all times to provide a useful option for passengers from Sandringham Road trying to get across to catch city-bound trains:
One thing that did impress me was to find a decent “here’s what’s in the area” map at Kingsland station. I reckon we need a lot more of these maps around our train stations and also at our key bus stops:
Nice to see B-Line buses marked so clearly.
All up, it’s good to see this all finished well in advance of next year’s Rugby World Cup. I guess what I hope is that these improvements don’t just represent a huge amount of money spent to get people to and from just a few rugby games, and in fact they are improvements that will benefit daily users of the public transport system. I can definitely see that the bus lanes will significantly benefit bus users along Sandringham Road and I hope that, through keeping the rail underpass open for commuters, the accessibility of Kingsland station for those coming from areas to the south of the station will be improved.
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Yes, as somebody with a crap sense of direction I love the maps! They have them in Chch next to each bus stop – is awesome.
Exactly, they are so useful for tourists too. They are at all the stations in Europe. I also wish that there would be more of these maps put up around the CBD too, highlighting local points of interest.
Great to see local area maps at stations, at long last! Kingsland would look even better if they managed to deal with the pest plant infestations that have ruined the native plantings that went in when the station was first redeveloped. I guess they’re working on the principle that attendees at the RWC won’t know or care about the difference between indigenous flora and exotic weeds.
IT is good to see some information like this around- especially given the rapid growth in patronage. I hear people on every train I catch now saying how its a nex experience for them.
The only thing missing from the above map is a note that the B-line connects with the train at Mt Eden Station. Maybe Mt Eden should actually be included on the map with an arrow along the B line saying “to uptown, midtown- approx. 6 minutes”, and then one on the train line saying something like”to Downtown- Britomart- Approx. 14 minutes”
Well those maps are great… More AT, more…
The covered walkway could use some drainage.
That said, I agree about the local map also—it certainly does not significantly commercially benefit the trains/buses but it is immensely helpful. The map shows that station designers can still be personally thoughtful.
I’ve seen these maps at Avondale and Onehunga (with a couple of minor errors) and I think a couple of other stations too. Good to see the b-line highlighted on the map, showing multiple options, even if it doesn’t intersect with the station, you can still see its nearby.
The map would make a lot more sense if the bus services weren’t so ridiculously complicated.
Maybe if some sort of frequency indicator could be added to the maps would make much more sense to new/infrequent users.
That map points out one of the silly things with PT in this part of the city. Despite a zillion individual bus routes in the area not a single one of them heads northward toward Grey Lynn, Ponsonby or the western CBD. Every one goes along New North Rd to Symonds St.
You have to detour via either Mt Albert or Newton just to get across the gully.
Running the Sandringham Rd buses over Bond St bridge and along Great North Rd and K Rd would be a good idea, along with running the Dominion Rd buses via Ian McKinnon.
Yeah but an enormous number of bus users along Sandringham Road and Dominion Road are heading to the university so you’re going to annoy the heck out of them by taking their routes away from Symonds Street.
When I used to catch Sandringham Road buses, I reckon around 25% of people got off at the corner with K Road & Symonds St, around 50% got off at the two university stops and about 25% got off in town.
Well I am thinking of a point when the ticketing system makes bus to bus transfers are easy. We don’t have to route every bus over Bond St or Ian McKinnon… just not route every single one via Symonds St. Given the volume of buses passing through New North Rd there should be plenty of opportunity to transfer to pick your route though the city.
…however my question would be: how many other people might catch the bus to the city or other places along the way, if it didn’t only service the universities well? When I lived on Sandringham Rd I used to get very annoyed that the bus seemed to do it’s damndest to avoid the CBD, by skirting right around the eastern side first and then stopping the second it got close to Queen St. Fine if you are headed to Uni, not so cool if you are going elsewhere.
Looking very closely at the timetable I have discovered there is actually a solitary bus each morning that does use the Bond St route (I guess it’s designed for school kids or something?), and a handful of expresses that use Ian McKinnion.
This seems to be another crazy case of Auckland bus planning: basically one line (Sandringham Rd) that has six origin points (three end points within a couple of km of each other, plus three short running variants) and three different routings through the CBD. Not to mention the classic Auckland trick of having two very separate terminal stops in the city, making it impossible to ‘just get the next bus to Sandringham Rd’.