The new bus network is great and should really help revolutionise public transport in Auckland. However if there is one problem with it, it is that it is going to be taking around three years to roll out across the entire city. Now that isn’t a criticism of Auckland Transport as I can understand just how much of an absolutely massive task it must be. Instead it’s just a reflection on how much better PT would be if we could get everything done sooner and something I’m almost certain AT staff would love too.
So with that in mind it’s really positive to see AT working to make some changes in other parts of the city where they think the changes can be made quickly and easily. That should not only help to bring some of the benefits of the new network to a wider area sooner, but should hopefully make the future wider consultation quicker and easier. In this case AT have announced a review on bus routes servicing Titirangi and Green Bay.
Auckland Transport is proposing changes that will make better use of the bus services that currently run in the Titirangi, Green Bay, Blockhouse Bay, Laingholm, Glen Eden and Tanekaha areas.
The proposed changes will increase service frequencies and create a simpler, easier to understand timetable compared to the 26 different route numbers currently operating. Timetables will also have even spacing between trips, easy to remember departure times and more trips throughout the day.
There will be better service frequencies with more route options between Titirangi and New Lynn. Currently services only run at odd times on weekdays between these centres with gaps of up to two hours between some services.
A new route will be created to link Titirangi Village directly with Glen Eden shops and train station and existing express services will be replaced with some new express routes.
Some direct trips to the city will be replaced by local trips to New Lynn where passengers will need to connect to another bus or train. Connections between bus and train have been timed to allow passengers to transfer easily.
Some low frequency services in Wood Bay, Tanekaha Rd, French Bay and Titirangi will be withdrawn. Other routes will also change but overall the number of trips will increase.
Services included in the review include: 19X, 104, 163, 170, 173, 173X, 177, 179, 179X, 180, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185, 187, 188X, 189, 189X, 191, 193, 197, 197X, 198, 198X, 199, 207, 207X
Group Manager of Public Transport, Mark Lambert says the proposed changes are a direct response to passenger requests to have a simpler, more legible and more frequent bus service.
“These bus service improvements can be made ahead of the wider New Network consultation for West Auckland.
“We have the resources and service operators are on board to make any changes, which depending on public feedback can be carried out in mid-2014.
“We will have information out in the community so we encourage people to pick up a copy of the consultation brochure, have a read of the changes and give their feedback on the proposals.”
Public consultation on the proposed changes runs from Monday 21 October to Friday 22 November 2013.
For more information about the proposal and feedback form go to www.AT.co.nz/GreenBayTitirangi or phone (09) 366 6400.
You just have to look at all of those route numbers to see just how complex things have been. The maps below show the changes. First up Green Bay
And Titirangi
As I said it’s good to see AT making these changes in advance of the wider network where possible.
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These before images look like they could have come straight out of the section in Jarret Walker’s book about how not to do PT and how to make it as confusing as possible to put people off using it. Dozens of route numbers do more or less the same route and all at vary frequencies meaning it’s impossible to glance at a map and work out which bus routes will run once a day or every 20 mins.
I frequently have the problem when heading west that I wait for a bus on Albert Street and the multitude of bus numbers mean I have to constantly keep checking as each one appears as to whether it goes where I want. I’ve missed several buses because I’m not sure that it’s one I could take until after it’s gone. So I’m very happy to see this major route consolidation and simplification.
I do still wonder why they plan to run so many of the buses all the way into the city – are they waiting for the trains to be fully rolled out before chopping more back to be rail feeders?
I’d expect that it’s considerably faster at the moment to catch a bus rather than a train to the city at the moment, and electrification won’t help considerably. Until the CRL, buses from the New Lynn area to downtown are likely to stay.
Depends just where exactly you compare, but speaking as a traveller from Glen Eden to the CBD they’re timetabled about the same, if you use an express or flyer bus with no stop after New Lynn (I’m using the 15F as a benchmark, which goes via the northwestern, cutting out the Great North Road through pt chev etc.
In reality the train is considerably more reliable and therefore faster during peak hour, all the more so at the moment with the waterview roadworks. If you choose a bus that stops after New Lynn, well, good luck. Electric trains will help considerably I think.
It’s probably an issue of not having there an capacity at the moment, and the fact that there isn’t any integrated fares yet. That suggests to me we’ll see further revision in a year or two with most of the routes snipped back to New Lynn and Avondale.
And FTN buses along New and Great North Roads available to transfer to at New Lynn for those who find that suits them better – so Green Bay bus to New Lynn, then a connection to a choice of connecting bus or train to the passenger’s destination.
Yes that’s kind of what I imagined would happen, trunk routes from places like New Lynn to Town certainly are important, but it’s always much simpler for users if this is a frequent services with its own number, rather than being composed of 10 different overlapping routes with different numbers that start from different locations.
That is exactly what is in the RPTP, although just Great North Road buses from New Lynn, New North will start at Rosebank.
Sooner this happens the better. Great North Road on a Sunday is a big mess. If services averaged out would get bus every 10 minutes, but get clumps so come with gaps of 30 minutes….
Good to see this mini rationalisation happening, hope keeps happening to deliver quick wins.
Wonder how many local services are being sacrificed i.e. those going connecting pensioner units with Titirangi/Glen Eden/New Lynn Shopping Centres.??
The local services that run maybe once a day and provide basically no useful mobility aside from looking good on a map?
Those granny routes are necessary. There are som people with very limited moblity eh re happy to plan trip around a one way loop that only runs a couple ofttimes a day.
Surely these people could be better served by demand responsive community transport or taxi vouchers. The ‘oneway loop that runs a couple of times a day’ is bad for the legibility of the total service to everyone else.
Good point.
Thank you, I often feel that demand responsive transit schemes are overlooked. Indeed, with new advancements in scheduling technology, they can be used for more mainstream public transport services too (i.e. the new Finnish demand responsive bus).
From a Glen Eden perspective I think these changes are great. I can see two main upsides for me; buses along Glendale Road are doubling (!) in frequency, and we get a bus direct up to Titirangi, which has never existed but could be enormously popular. The latter might sound insignificant, but I think it’s a really good move just to link these two local centres together via the several schools that are in between.
Give the man at AT a medal. I’ll certainly shout him a coffee at Hardware Cafe.
Please note it is a bay that is green, so therefore it is Green Bay.
No its Brown, they just couldn’t call it Brown Bay since people would be confused with Browns Bay.
Major changes to bus routes generally occur when new contracts commence – so even if the design of new bus routes can be done relatively quickly, implementation takes years to achieve. So most of the blame for delay rests on the service contracting (commercial) model for PT that is legislatively imposed on us.
Graeme is absolutely right here.
104 currently runs in one direction, would be nice to see it run in both directions, it also only runs between 9:00am to 3:00pm, it would be great if it ran from 7am to 10pm or something like that, and more frequently rather than every hour maybe every half-hour during light hours at least. This would make this service much more useful to me/others in the area. Also perhaps adjust the route to run closer to the avondale train station somehow, not sure how that will work out though, if it ran down the bottom through the avondale shops that would work out I suppose, nobody really gets off at the part it goes up the hill for… lol. Hopefuly AT/Urbex reads this, doubt it though XD.
They need to fix the ridiculous situation where some buses on these routes accept AT Hop and others don’t. If you want to catch a 197, 198 or 207 bus you have to make sure you get the right brand of bus for example. Some are UE and some GW.
Well that will be fixed when the long overdue AT hop bus roll-out is done…
@bbc: Your absolutely right about that. But there are situations where you want a trunk route to be composed of multiple overlapping services that diverge at some point. In such cases, I would advocate naming those routes using the same number but with letter modifier. Its fairly easy to tell someone going from Pt Chev to CBD to catch “any 10 bus” (assuming say 10A, 10B and 10C were the buses on the route), rather than to say, catch the “262, 274 or 277”.
Our new system uses 2 digits with As and Bs for the FSN routes.
I would agree about the route numbers but would prefer 200, 201, 202 etc, especially if the FSN route is 20.
I disagree that there are many places where we want overlapping L routes though.
Having just looked at the (existing) Western Line timetable, the trains/bus are NOT timetabled in sync at all. I’m only looking at weekend timetables, which should be the easiest to timetable in sync. For example, the buses from New Lynn to Titirangi leave at 10.00, 10.30, 11.00, 11.30, 12.00 etc, but the train arrives at 9.35, 10.05, 10.35, 11.05, 11.35, 12.05 etc which means at 25min wait!
Hopefully when this new bus timetable is introduced, then the Western line timetable will have changed by then, because as they’re cutting all direct city buses in the weekends and offpeak, these kind of waiting times are unacceptable and will prove to be hugely unpopular.
Did you look at the arriving buses vs. the inbound trains? If you were timing anything it would be inbound to inbound in the morning and the middle of the day.
Well if they’re planning on having 15min frequencies on the western line when this timetable comes into play then that’s fine, but 25min inbound or outbound for me is not acceptable and most people won’t tolerate those kind of waits. I guess people can transfer to other buses which I admittedly didn’t think of.
My point is you looked at the outbound pattern in the morning, when most people are heading inbound in the morning. Dd you look at the inbound transfer time?