Once again when it comes to building an infrastructure project it is the public transport priority that is the first to suffer.
Government road-builders stand accused of undermining Auckland’s public transport effort by closing bus priority lanes for the Transport Agency’s $220 million upgrade of the Northwestern Motorway causeway.
Bus passengers complaining of delays between Pt Chevalier and Te Atatu are in for 2 years of misery while shoulder lanes on both sides of the motorway are closed for its marine causeway to be raised and widened.
“It’s atrocious,” said Te Atatu resident Carol Shannon while waiting to travel home from work in central Auckland, a trip she estimates is taking 50 per cent longer than scheduled. “I used to get home by 6.40pm but for the last month it has been taking until 7pm.”
Commuter Cedric Suifua said he suffered a “close to half-hour” delay getting home on Thursday, despite lighter traffic in the school holidays.
The immediate problem is the closure of a priority lane for buses and cars carrying two or more occupants along the on-ramp to the Northwestern Motorway from Great North Rd at Waterview, forcing traffic to queue along Great North Rd to Pt Chevalier.
Ritchies Transport chief Andrew Ritchie said that was causing delays of between 10 and 25 minutes in the evening travel peak.
Although the only westbound closure so far is that of the Waterview on-ramp priority lane, the agency intends shutting 640m of the bus shoulder lane on that side of the motorway from August 11. That is expected to stay closed for 2 years, although the agency hopes to open a wider and longer citybound bus lane in two years.
The onramp has been closed for a while now but it appears that in a few weeks the rest of the bus lane on the southern side of the motorway will close too. Of course this will mean that buses will be forced to travel along the motorway with the rest of the traffic, losing all time advantages it previously had. As you can see from this (blurry) webcam image taken not long ago, it means buses will be stuck in with a lot of cars and will likely be disastrous for patronage on bus routes that use the busway. Note: you can just make out two buses enjoying the bus lane to sail past the traffic.
Te Atatu MP Phil Tywford has suggested turning one existing lane into a HOV lane so buses and vehicles with multiple people can all use it to avoid some of the queues but the NZTA have dismissed this while Auckland Transports response is simply to add time to the bus timetables.
Labour’s spokesman on Auckland issues, Te Atatu MP Phil Twyford, cannot understand why the Transport Agency is not allocating one of the motorway’s three general traffic lanes in each direction to high-occupancy vehicles.
Transport Agency acting Auckland highways manager Steve Mutton said various options were being investigated, including Mr Twyford’s suggestion.
Auckland Transport spokesman Mark Hannan said western bus timetables were being reviewed to take account of “running time issues across the day – not just at peak times”.
This is really unacceptable and both agencies need to do more to ensure that bus users are not being treated like the least important users. If both agencies were smart they would take Phil’s suggestion and go a step further by putting some temporary changes in place to put more bus services along the motorway until the new network is rolled out to try and encourage people to use them. That might just get enough people off the road to avoid the motorway becoming even more of a parking lot in mornings and afternoons.
This isn’t the first time we have seen PT users treated badly by agencies. Last year we saw Transpower close a lane on the busway at certain points to enable them to drag cables through pipes that were installed when the busway was built while this year we saw them close the city-bound buslane on Fanshawe St to do the same. This forced buses to have to fight for spots with motorists even though 80% of the people travelling along Fanshawe St are doing so in a bus.
It seems it is sacrilege to even consider closing a vehicle lane yet if there is bus priority, it is the first to get the chop.
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Perhaps the NZTA might consider changing its name to the ‘New Zealand Single Occupant Vehicle (and BIG Trucks) Agency’ to reflect the reality of the way it currently interprets its mission.
We so need a ‘like’ button 🙂
I agree, but it would also make people lazy. We can like in our comments 🙂
“If both agencies were smart they would take Phil’s suggestion and go a step further by putting some temporary changes in place to put more bus services along the motorway until the new network is rolled out to try and encourage people to use them.”
That’s the killer. The fact such an opportunity hasn’t even been considered by these organisations makes me think the place is being run by monkeys. NZTA I can understand as they only care about the car. But AT? They have been handed an opportunity to promote PT (long term) and help ease congestion on this route. Instead they have gone the other way and will instead give PT a further bad name.
I am starting to think Auckland is beyond help…
The darkest hour is just before dawn.
If both agencies were smart and actually actively tried to genuinely optimise existing resources and delicer value fir money perhaps dedicating an existing lane to buses would be prioritsed over new capacity in the first place.
Reading this, I’m beginning to wonder whether there’s a case for a campaign for getting everbody in their cars. Clog the whole roading system up. Get some bad media publicity for the transport agencies. Forcing them to change their policies. You could just about do it in a town of Auckland’s size. On another note, nice to see the CFN posters up at the bottom of Queen Street!
Treating PT passengers so poorly makes a mockery of Dr Levy’s recent commitment to bringing a customer focus to Auckland Transport.
NZTA maximises its revenues by encouraging greater consumption of fuel and road user charges. NOT by PT and cycling, these modes decrease NZTA’s revenue so why would they encourage them?
Of course that is nonsense talk. NZTA do not have revenues; they are public servants spending our taxation, supposedly for the common good. They are not a business with clients, or profit, or even a brand. For any of them to think or talk that way just goes to show how the road lobby and the neoliberal priesthood have got their utter bullshit into these servants of the people.
Maybe the truck lobby could get on-board if it was a one of the existing lanes became a “HOV and Truck” lane.
To be fair, in this instance control of the state highway network is beyond dr Levys scope
Yeah they have closed bus lanes on the north-western where they are not even doing any work yet, for a few months now, quite annoying and unnecessary, I thought it would only be a few weeks, but 2 years? What the heck seriously… lol.
I feel so bad for everyone out west. It seems works on that motorway are never ending.
I am in no way affected by this, yet I find it outrageous. It seems the bus lanes are treated as just an act of good will and NZTA can just get rid of them so they don’t have to touch the three general traffic lanes.
+1
They are also not proper by seats and nor will they be upon reconstruction. At various different points along the network will still need to fight traffic
The funny thing is that NZTA put up a LED sign saying “Westbound bus lane closed XX date to XX date, expect delays”, when they started. But they have left it closed since and this was about 1-2 months ago, they also closed that part of it way prematurely, there was nothing going on until weeks later when they started work on the waterview connection into that area (pt chev underbridge bus lane).
Settle down, it’s only for TWO YEARS ! I do it daily and that Bus turn from GNR onto the Waterview onramp is already a disaster, losing the next big section heading West will be a shocker. What happens to the cycle lane ?
Details here Geoff: http://greaterakl.wpengine.com/2013/05/25/sh16-causeway-project-starts/
Basically moves to the westbound shoulder initially, then back to where it was once raised.
I use the NW parking lot every day mostly as a single user car occupant and I’m really depressed by the thought of four more years of construction debacle. Hell we’ve put up with two already. I’m up for converting the 3 lanes into a 2 plus one dedicated bus & high occupancy lane model for the duration of the project on the basis that it is actively policed and making the change is actively supported with more frequent buses and extending the right of way beyond the roadworks all the way to the city so that it becomes a close as possible fully grade separated.
I don’t even get why it takes so long, AT & NZTA both love taking years to do things that take other bigger countries a few months. They need more pressure and some better project managers imo and the work force should be hard at it rather than standing around having a tea party like 95% of the time I pass them.
There will be several issues. Firstly the environmental controls will be strict when working in the CMA. So they will have to be quite delicate, and enabling works always seem to take quite a bit of time. Secondly, settlement and stability on the soft sediments will be a big issue. This takes time to build out. There may be ways to accelerate this but they cost money – and there is no point in them finishing much earlier than Waterview.
If they did keep the bus lanes and they proved too effective, people might start to question why they are building 18* lanes of freedom in the first place!
*I know it isnt actually 18
+1
Well I must say this is rather humorous. After listening to you guys complaining for years about how the bus shoulders are just a token gesture offering no real benefit I see you are all up in arms about there performance being diminished for a few years.
A token gesture, but a token gesture that works better than nothing.
Kinda like, a gravel road is better than a grass field.
I would be surprised if anyone suggested should bus lanes offer no real benefit. The benefit is self evident when traffic is congested.