Getting the NW Busway in the Auckland Plan

Some good news came out today, with Auckland Council confirming that submission period for the Auckland Plan is being extended to October 31st – so you have a bit more time to get those submissions in! As I noted yesterday, when it comes to what the Auckland Plan says about transport, it’s quite a challenge to find a transport project which isn’t mentioned – the problem is that the Plan doesn’t undertake a tough enough prioritisation programme. However, one project which I think should be mentioned – especially because of the way Council wants Auckland to grow – is a Northwest Busway.

In the Auckland Plan, Westgate is highlighted as a priority metropolitan centre for development. Metropolitan centres are described in the diagram below (plucked out of chapter 8 of the Draft Plan) – so they’re certainly something quite different to the mess Westgate is now, and pretty high density in terms of both people living and working in the area: Although Westgate has fairly good road connections with the rest of Auckland – thanks to the recent opening of the Hobsonville motorway, it has extremely poor public transport options at the moment. In fact, most of the northwest part of Auckland has very poor public transport.

The Auckland Plan envisages Westgate eventually having a Rapid Transit connection to the North Shore and to Henderson, but somewhat oddly, not along the more direct route to the Auckland isthmus – the SH16 corridor: I must say I find it rather odd that Westgate, rather than Henderson, has been chosen as the Metropolitan Centre of the northwest part of Auckland. If you look at the Rapid Transit Network, it would certainly make more sense for Henderson to be the main growth node in this part of the city: If Auckland Council is determined for Westgate, rather than Henderson, to be the metropolitan centre of the northwest, then it would seem to me that a Northwest Busway become a strategic requirement – to ensure this metropolitan centre has good public transport connectivity to the Auckland isthmus. But it’s not only the classification of Westgate as a metropolitan centre which highlights the need for a NW Busway, it’s also the northwest is a major area for greenfield expansion – as shown in the map below: You can see by comparing the yellow box with the area of central Auckland that it would cover, that we’re not talking about an insignificant area of greenfield development (although obviously the Whenuapai Airbase falls within that area, I’m not quite sure what the plan is there). All this just highlights how we really do have what I’ve called an “RTN gap” along SH16: But what does all this mean? Sure it seems that we have a strategic case for an RTN along state highway 16, but NZTA are about to widen the stretch of SH16 between Te Atatu and St Lukes without providing a busway – isn’t this all a bit late? What good would highlighting the route as an RTN do now?

These are all useful questions, and I couldn’t agree more that it would have been really useful for the Northwest Busway idea to emerge and gain a lot of support a few years back. However, the exact design of the stretch of SH16 between Te Atatu and Westgate still seems like it’s up in the air – with the motorway due to be widened some time in the next 10 years. So there’s an opportunity to place a busway along that route. Plus, with the northwest motorway being so incredibly tidal (extremely busy in the peak direction, almost empty in the opposite direction) in its traffic flows, there might be the possibility of being a bit innovative about how we get buses between Te Atatu and Pt Chevalier.

I had always thought a NW Busway would work something like the map below – with stations at Western Springs, Pt Chevalier, Te Atatu, Rosebank (possibly), Lincoln Road, Massey and Westgate. This would actually be one or two more stations than the Northern Busway, so even if the Pt Chevalier to town section was initially on Great North Road (with enhanced bus lanes) that might be acceptable as a first step.There are still a few interesting questions to ponder about a NW Busway:

• Which stations should have park and ride stations?
• How might we find an innovative solution (moveable barrier, use a lane of the motorway travelling the other way etc.) for between Te Atatu and Pt Chevalier?
• How should buses from local areas access the stations? This is particularly relevant because the worst congestion is generally on the feeder roads to the motorway rather than the motorway itself.
• Should the busway go to the north of the motorway, to the south, or down the middle?
• How should the Westgate bus hub work?

Having the project identified in the Auckland Plan would put some pressure on NZTA to ensure they do build a proper busway between Westgate and Te Atatu, and would also ensure that innovative ideas for providing high quality bus priority between Te Atatu and Pt Chevalier was explored (bus shoulder lanes that end at each onramp and offramp really don’t cut it in my opinion). It would also ensure that Council sees Westgate as more than just a future Manukau City “giant carpark with a few buildings sprinkled around” type of town centre.

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