No new bus lanes for 3 years

One area that we have been particularly unimpressed on over the last three years has been the complete lack of any new bus lanes – or even just bus priority measures – over the last three years. In fact bus lanes have actually been removed as the Remuera Rd bus lane was downgraded to a T3 lane.

There are a couple of key reasons for us to be annoyed at this lack of action. Bus lanes can perform an incredibly important function as they can:

• Speed up trips by allowing buses to avoid congestion and thus make PT more attractive (increases PT patronage).
• Increase the amount of people able to move through a specific road corridor thus making better use of our roading infrastructure.
• Reduce ongoing operating costs and therefore reduce the amount of subsidy needed to run services.

I suspect the first two points should be fairly straightforward so I just want to expand on the last one a little bit. My understanding is that most buses in Auckland have an average travel speed of about 20 km per hour. I say most because buses that can use good bus infrastructure (Northern busway buses & roads with existing bus lanes) are able to travel considerably faster – perhaps up to twice as fast – thanks to the infrastructure. What that means is that where in the past a bus might have only been able to do one run during the morning peak they could now do two so. That means we can get one of the following outcomes:

1. Less buses and therefore expenditure is needed to maintain the same level of service meaning we can reduce the amount of funding needed and therefore improve cost recovery.
2. Use the freed up budget to run more buses, increasing the attractiveness of services and therefore improving cost recovery.

The key point is that the investment in the infrastructure can have huge impacts on operational expenditure. This is similar to what Stu talked about earlier this week. The one downside to bus lanes is that they are often unpopular with motorists, especially those who feel they have an entitlement to as much asphalt as possible (and then some). Those noisy motorists tend to quickly gain the attention of councillors meaning we often see any proposed projects quickly killed off to appease the road gods. The separation of the political aspects of transport  from the operational ones was meant to be one of the key reasons for setting up  Auckland Transport however more and more it appears they are simply too scared to make the changes necessary.

It is this situation that led us to the tweet below.

Remember last election when the stupid issue distracting everyone was bus lanes enforcement? 3 years later not a single metre of bus lane.

— Greater Auckland (@GreaterAKL) October 3, 2013

The tweet was quickly picked up on by the herald who seem desperate to find anything to beat up the council up over

Len Brown has not built a single metre of bus lane in his first term as mayor of the Super City.

Mr Brown, who says fixing public transport, including better bus services, is his top priority, has splurged $770 million on public transport and $1.2 billion on roads and footpaths in the past three years.

But not a cent has gone on new lanes to improve bus services, which have drawn criticism and seen a fall of 2.9 per cent in patronage over the past year, from 55.1 million bus trips to 53.5 million.

Auckland Transport yesterday confirmed a tweet on the Auckland Transport Blog that after the “stupid” 2010 election distraction of bus-lane enforcement, not one had been built.

An Auckland Transport spokesman said the main change on bus lanes was allowing cars with three or more passengers to use the 5km Remuera Rd bus lane.

He said a lot of work had been done on signage and marking of bus lanes to make things clearer for motorists after the 2010 issues.

Bus priority work continued on major projects such as Dominion Rd and Ameti in southeast Auckland and a major revamp of bus services, the spokesman said.

Yes work is progressing on Dominion Rd which should upgrade the existing bus lanes to a near busway status and the first tentative parts of AMETI have started but most of the bus lanes on that project aren’t going to come into use for many many years. Working on signage appears to have been the only really visible change on this list of completed tasks from this AT board paper at the beginning of the year on the topic.

Following the release of The Bus and Transit Lane Review: Planning and Implementation Model for Auckland, July 2011, AT has made significant advances in implementing the associated action plan. This report provides an update on the work streams outlined in the action plan.

The following key milestones have been completed:

• Formation of the bus and transit lane steering group;
• Region wide review of effectiveness of priority bus and transit lanes;
• Change of Remuera Road bus lane to a T3 lane;
• Completion of a productivity analysis for all bus and transit lanes in the region;
• Development of an on-going productivity analysis programme;
• Implementation of trial bus and transit lane signage and marking improvement measures;
• Completion of Grafton Bridge bus lane upgrade measures – signage and road markings
• Audit of Onewa Road T3 lane and implementation of measures to allow enforcement.

The following tasks are still outstanding:

• Audit of all existing bus and transit lanes;
• Roll out of education campaigns in support of new bus and transit lane signage;
• Including bus and transit lane changes in the New Zealand Road Code.

The planning and implementation model mentioned can be found here and it looked at how AT would assess potential bus lanes in the future. It also considered that on some routes where there are less buses but where we want to provide improvements that T2/3 lanes might be more appropriate and I agree. While I’m not always a huge fan of T2/3 I do think it creates a useful stepping stone on the way to a full bus lanes and so can provide many of the benefits of a dedicated lane without as much negative reaction from drivers.

So which routes should AT really rolling T2/3 lanes or bus lanes out to? Well really they should be on roads with a frequent bus route and the proposed new bus network provides a blueprint for just that.

So come on AT, you need to get some more bus lanes, or at least some T2/3 rolled out to help support the bus network.

Note: Mayoral Candiatate John Palino predictably picked up on the herald article and used it to complain about Len Brown however was silent when asked if he would actually do anything about it.

@johnpalino Will you? if so on what roads? what are thoughts on T2/3?

— Greater Auckland (@GreaterAKL) October 7, 2013

Share this