Auckland Transport has been spending much of the last eight months putting together a comprehensive review of how bus lanes operate around Auckland. I must say that I was pretty worried about the possible results of this review: because it arose out of yet another NZ Herald war on bus lanes and because there was quite a bit of talk about “alignment” between what the various old councils did. We do have T2, T3 and bus only lanes around Auckland, with some of the bus lanes operating at different hours from others. While at first glance this may appear somewhat confusing, there is a logic behind what has been implemented (well, usually) so turning everything into T2 lanes or T3 lanes or bus lanes would probably be a dumb idea.
Fortunately, I’m actually pleasantly surprised by the outcome of the review. You can read it here. As well as largely recommending that the current extent of bus lanes stays in place, it very helpfully does two important things:
- Clearly articulating the process through which bus lanes and T2/T3 lanes are implemented
- Making a number of very helpful suggestions about improving the signage of these lanes
Bus lanes have had an ugly tendency to become political footballs over the last few years, and seem to draw the particular ire of those who get snapped driving in them when they shouldn’t. Frustratingly, this has held back the expansion of the bus lane network in Auckland, which is a great pity as if there was one single way to quickly and cheaply improve Auckland’s PT system to a pretty vast extent, it would be to dramatically increase the bus lane network. Hopefully this document outlines the framework by which that can happen.
From the executive summary, the goals of the review are highlighted:
The first is outlined in very general terms, that we have limited ability to widen our roads yet as Auckland grows over the next few decades we will need a PT system capable of carrying 200 million trips a year or more. This is a useful reminder of the basic reason behind bus lanes: to get more out of the street network, to utilise the limited roadspace we have in a much more efficient way.
One thing the review also had to look at was what to do about a number of existing bus lanes where previous council decisions had left some question marks over them. Thankfully, this analysis was done in a sensible way and the current configurations have been retained (with Tamaki Drive’s temporary T2 lane becoming permanent). This has been based on a good process of analysing the roads in question: The really interesting numbers relate to the percentage of people carries on the bus/T2/T3 lane compared to the general lane, but also to what’s called a “productivity level”, which takes the speed of the people into account. For Remuera Road we see that only around a third of people travel in the bus lane, but because under the T2/T3 scenarios traffic conditions in the general lane are worsened, we actually see the bus lane providing the highest productivity figures.
This is shown in the tables below, which highlight how Remuera Road’s carrying capacity is maximised in the bus lane configuration:
Another interesting thing to note from the first table is confirmation that more people travel on the bus lane than the general lane for Dominion Road, that Onewa Road’s T3 lane carries the vast majority of person trips at peak times and that 72-78% of person trips along Fanshawe Street are by bus. The latter reinforces my belief that PT modeshare for people living on the North Shore and working in the city centre must be extremely high.
Moving along to the process of implementing more bus lanes, one thing very helpful that the review document does is note that the long term goal is to analyse the entire Quality Transit Network to see whether it should have bus lanes, with the assumption being that over time it is most likely that the whole QTN would. This network is shown as the green lines in the map below:
As I noted above, the review also outlines the process by which Auckland Transport will go through for these QTN route to see whether they should be a bus lane, a T2/T3 lane, a freight lane or remain a general traffic lane. The diagram below looks quite complex, but I think is a really useful step-chart to analysing this issue: And finally, the review also provides some good clarification on what should be included in the signage (including on the street) to clarify where lanes begin and end, where you can turn in to them to make turns and so forth. I think some of the suggested results of this thinking are a really good step forwards: I would personally prefer to see more green paint on the road, but I understand that can be pretty expensive to do and very difficult to maintain.
So overall I’m pretty pleased with the review document. I also very much hope that now it has been completed we can start again looking at various routes around the region which would fit the requirements for bus lane implementation. Most of Manukau Road seems a pretty obvious first candidate.
Interesting that they appear to use 7.30 – 8.30am as morning peak. If you instead use the operational hours of the Dominion Road bus lanes (7 – 9am) there’s actually 54 buses using the bus lanes, not 34.
Yeah, you raise and interesting point, and I think they’ve made a mistake there. The road is still very busy at 9.15 am, far more so than would be considered peak traffic on almost any other arterial in NZ. I don’t know what it’s like before 7.30, but I imagine still very busy.
Peak hours start and finish at different times – in Mangere the roads are tremendously busy at 6 and 7am, something that office-centric 9-5 transport planners in central Auckland might be liable to miss.
The Herald are crowing like dicks again:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10739856
Yes well hopefully that anti bus lane sentiment can now wither away thinking it has been successful and we can push on implementing more bus lanes.
Next up will be a campaign around the ‘confusing’ school speed limit signs. Clearly they have no belief that getting into a car requires a functional knowledge of the road rules and the ability to observe what is happening around you.
It is not entirely correct to say “we (the Auckland Council/Auckland Transport) have limited ability to widen our roads” – just in case of the Isthmus (the area of the former Auckland City Council), there was a road widening designation basically imposed on many of the key arterials which have been rolled over in various District Plans but then forgotten by Council. The designation provides the necessary means under the RMA for AT to widen the roads for bus lane or whatever purpose (including cyclelane and footpath) if it wishes. However, it appears these designations are swept under the carpet since every review and just sit within the District Plan quietly and forgotten by people so no one seems to be even aware of their existence until the time when a property owner of an affected property finds it mentioned in a LIM report or wants to develop their properties but then find that they need to contact AT for written approval under section 176 of the RMA.
Certainly, budget is a key barrier for the former councils/AT to acquire properties under the designation for doing anything real but they DO have this legal ability. What AT needs is perhaps just a better long-term plan to determine how to utilise these designations and of course budget them accordingly in order to achieve this if they are determined to. If they dont do anything, these designations would just sit there for another decades without achieving nothing but just annoy the relevant property owners and AT could keep thinking there is a “long term vision” (yeah, people like to talk about long term vision on everything but most of time, nothing could really happen in this lovely country).
I think there’s recognition that widening doesn’t really achieve much in the longer term except destroy the city. Most arterials have the ability to be four lanes: two general plus two peak time bus lanes. Do we really want to go beyond that? Do we really want six lane defacto motorways cutting through the city? I sure don’t.
Thanks the blogger for the attention and response. While I understand what you said that wide roads is not good for city, the fact is many arterials in Auckland indeed have only one lane on each direction for traffic, which is not very satisfactory for the arterials to be arterials. Please be also aware that I am talking about ARTERIALS, not local roads. And arterials are supposed to carry traffic in order to be arterials, which may not sound very political correct in this forum I know.
AFTER ALL, as stated in my post, I was saying the designation could be used for BUS LANE, FOOTPATH and CYCLELANE – all the sustainable transport modes you guys love most rather than for private vehicles. I just feel funny that everytime when talking about widening a road, people will automatically relate this to a motorway….~ Would a motorway have intersections or pedestrain facilities?
I think my key point is how to better utilise these designations to suit the whatever transport purposes rather than just stating the AT does nt have the ability as this is not very true.
Even using the designations that already exist will generally be very costly, and often require land purchase and have significant local impacts on properties and buildings. That is not to say that such widening – especially if used to improve PT and active modes – is the wrong choice for any particular road. But “limited ability” in my opinion is quite correct. We are already a very tarmac-covered city, and as admin says – we should be very careful not to take the arterial (3-lane OR 2lane) concept too far, in the way we have already done with our motorways.
Solving congestion with more road capacity is like solving obesity by letting out your belt. It may be a blanket statement, but like admin’s “limited ability” statement, it is true in an OVERALL sense.
Herald coverage of this issue has always been crazily unbalanced. Meh! One can only assume that one of the editors got a ticket and was so enraged (laws are for little people) he has been on a crusade ever since.
I think maybe it would be good if they brought back the rule of enforcing bus lanes from 50 meters out (not 70) but at the same time lowered the fee for a ticket. $150 is really very high – maybe $75 would be more appropriate?
I think I remember reading in one of their stories at the time that this was the result of one of their staff being pinged which caused them to look into it.
And in their article today, the are frankly admitting that they have been running a “Herald Campaign”. Stuff like today’s headline should be in an editorial section, not under “news”. If I was actually a subscriber, stuff like that would make me stop my subscription to this rag.
How about they report the PT figures too? Cheap way to fill a column, but I guess the facts there don’t help support their ‘campaign’….
Under the post of “ensuring the City Rail Link is no “boondoggle” I had a long comment talking about building a “UFO” to make Auckland moving. This “UFO” should be called “Super P&R Scheme”. I believe that this scheme does meet the requirement of (Page9 section 2.1 of the review)
Key factors to the success of these cities include having:
a strong institutional/government support for integrated land use and PT planning
a layered arrangement of PT services, involving:
o a Regional Transit Network (RTN) backbone,
o a Quality Transit Network (QTN),
o a Local Connector Network (LCN) of supporting services / feeders combining to provide good geographical coverage
targeted services to appropriately accommodate key demand areas
high frequency and reliable PT services
investment in PT infrastructure and stations
Another queston is How will we do it?
It looks like AT is working towards better direction. However from the review I think that the AT still misses some fundamental points of getting things done efficiently.
If we do things smartly we just need 200 buses to run whole city’s bus network and easily get about 10,000 park spaces Citywide to be used as Park and Ride facility without much cost.
Good to see they are looking at extending the T3 on Onewa onto the on-ramp. This will be a postive for all users, and very easy to implement. Hopefully NZTA arent overly bureaucratic about it, and allow the change.
When are we going to see a matching T3 up Onewa??
I think AT are progressing investigation of the west bound transit lane, but putting a lane up Onewa will mean the couple of corner shops won’t be able to use ‘their’ on street parking outside! Oh no there goes that idea!
Hopefully improving the bus lane signage & marking doesn’t mean just dumming down drivers even further. There has to be a point where road users take some responsibility for where/how they drive. A perhaps timely debate is happening next Tuesday – ARE WE MAKING DRIVERS DUMMIES at Auckland Uni. AT are on the teams.
Does anyone else think that they should paint the broken yellow lines on the 24 hour bus lanes, like the Central Connector along Symonds Street? Or is it just asking to be too logical… I constantly see cars parked along there, without realising this is a no-stopping zone… or am I completely off my bonkers?
Hmmm… That sounds sensible.
I was thinking about this the other day about ways to improve ticket sales on trains. Perhaps they should increase the bus lane fines with all the money going to a lottery for people who buy train tickets/bus tickets etc. If people can’t read obvious signs or aren’t paying attention, then they shouldn’t be driving any way. Say you have a special Hop card for trains/buses and every time you swipe it, you go into a draw for the lottery. I know it would never happen, but I would think it would increase ticket sales if you had 4 million in prizes every year. Heck, you may not even need conductors to check tickets.
And yes, Dominion road is very busy from 7am onwards till about 9:30. An almost constant flow of NB vehicles.
I like your thinking Ari, there are lots of non engineering and low cost ways to engage people with PT, even if it just to reward those already using it…. because right now it looks like we’re heading to capacity issues rather than problems getting people to ride the trains…
Also i do think the cash fares should go up and the pass fares be discounted- when real integrated ticketing rolls out.