On Monday Auckland Transport are launching the next consultation for the New Network and this time it’s the turn of Hibiscus Coast. AT say the changes to the network are planned to go in early mid 2015 which could make the area the first to change to the New Network as the South Auckland changes aren’t due till later in 2015. As a reminder about the changes being made with new network watch this video from Auckland Transport

The first and perhaps most significant change to the network is that AT will extend the Northern Express (NEX) to a new busway station. AT have already started on this and built some of the Park n Ride planned however I believe it has been halted due to another challenge to the Environment court by a local land owner. It’s proposing NEX services running at 30 minute frequencies off peak and with 15 minute frequencies during the peak which it is describing as 6am-8am and 4:30pm – 7pm. They say services will be timetabled to ensure reliable connections with local services.

Hibiscus Coast Consultation - Busway Station

Where the Hibiscus Coast differs from other parts of the region is that there are no all-day frequent services and services that are a minimum of half hourly are made up of a two lower frequency for part of their journey. The full map of proposed services is below (click to enlarge).

Hibiscus Coast Consultation - Map Combined

At first glance one area that seems less than ideal is how buses are treated in relation to the Silverdale Town Centre. Going to the busway station some buses enter the town centre before doubling back and then going to the station while other buses skip it inbound and only go through outbound. All of this is because vehicles aren’t allowed to turn right out of Silverdale St or Wainui Rd. AT say that if a proposed new road gets built it will allow them to send all buses though the centre in both directions however as an interim measure perhaps they should just signalise one of the problem intersections and then have all buses run a logical route through it.

Hibiscus Coast Consultation - Silverdale Town Centre

The consultation will open Monday for a month.

Here’s the press release

More buses more often, new bus routes and extending the Northern Express to Silverdale, these are some of Auckland Transport’s proposals to boost public transport options for the Hibiscus Coast.

Anthony Cross, Public Transport Network Manager says the Hibiscus Coast is getting some notable service improvements. “Extending the Northern Express to Silverdale is huge, outside peak hours that will cut 30 minutes off the journey time to Auckland’s city centre”.

There will also be a new bus service for the growing area at Millwater plus buses every 30 minutes between Orewa, Silverdale and Manly, seven days a week.

More frequent local services, and a number of new or trial bus routes are also some of the benefits residents can look forward to under the New Network.

“We’re also building a new busway station at Silverdale which will become a key interchange for the Coast. We are increasing the Park and Ride car parks too,” says Mr Cross.

“The New Network will change the way people travel – it is a fundamental shift in the principles behind how we plan the public transport network. There will be a few challenging years ahead of us as we consult and implement, but in the long term it will make a very positive difference to Auckland’s public transport system.”

Consultation on the New Network for the Hibiscus Coast runs from Monday 14 July to Thursday 14 August.

Following consultation, changes are planned to take effect in early-to-mid 2015. There will be an extensive information campaign ahead of the changes, and the new timetables will be available ahead of time so that passengers can plan their journeys.

In coming weeks, Auckland Transport will have people in local markets, shopping centres, and transport hubs and on the streets on the Hibiscus Coast talking to customers about these changes and getting their views. A series of information events have also been planned.

For more information on the New Network for the Hibiscus Coast go to www.AT.govt.nz/newnetwork

The New Network is a region wide public transport network which is proposed to deliver bus services at least every 15 minutes throughout the day, seven days a week on major routes between the hours of 7am to 7pm. Services will connect better with train services for those customers who require connections.

South Auckland was the first region to be consulted on the New Network in 2013.

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38 comments

  1. The problem I have with this is that it ensures that, other than Park’n’ride, all users will be transferring from/to buses and based on the UP maps, this is incredibly unlikely to change. Seems like a waste of an opportunity not to have the bus way finish within a place that has considerable potential for walkup – Millwater.

    1. how do you service Millwater? And why?!?

      From what I can tell Millwater has been designed in a way that is hostile to PT. Low density, residential sprawl with a circuitous road network characterised by poor connectivity etc etc. Better to stick to the existing town centres and main roads – I’d suggest Orewa via Silverdale is the end game for the NEX, rather than Dillwater.

        1. Best get up here for a nosey Stu. Google Maps, Auckland GIS etc are all well out of date.

        2. In my view extend the NEX to Orewa via Hibiscus Coast Highway as that’s a destination and would be fantastic in summer to be able to get to Orewa using it. My guess is it would be really popular. Millwater is a low density development that will never achieve much walk up (compared to Orewa with more apartments) and it’s not like NEX is going to be extended further north.

        3. Bryce not sure why you’re so keen on Millwater rather Orewa. Millwater typical urban sprawl development made up of houses all on 500m+ sections with a poor road network. Another monumental let down by developers and planners. From what I can tell there will end up being about 3,500 dwellings all up which equates to about 10,000 people. By comparison Orewa today has ~3,900 dwellings and 8,520 residents. The lower number of residents to dwellings probably represents more retires. The thing is with the unitary plan Millwater will be limited to a single house zone. Orewa has a town centre zoning in the middle allowing up to 4 stories (should be higher) along with a little bit of Mixed Use and Mixed Housing Urban. Could probably increase population by 5-10k with that if developed to the max. Much better to send the NEX there than Millwater

        4. The main issue of course is the HCH. Unless we put a busway in up to the Whangaparoa turn off, travel times will vary greatly depending on time of day / traffic. Don’t get me wrong, I would love to have the NEX come within 800m of my place. Comes down to allocation of road space again.

        5. In fact, it would probably be faster and more consistent to bring it down Grand Drive rather than HCH.

        6. Matt, there are townhouses going in to Millwater now if you came up and had a look before commenting, so its not all 500m2 plus lots. Likewise Orewa does not have a higher number of apartments. Nautalis is actually a hotel largely now and there are only a few other apartment complexes, so the argument for Orewa having a lower population per house is flawed. What it will be is that Orewa has rental accommodation where as Millwater does not really. That rental accommodation in Orewa is a mix of solo mums and families and retires so therefore the hypothetical number used at Millwater will give it a different number to the real number of Orewa. Millwater may well turn out a lot higher or lower, its all guess work at the moment.

          Furthermore you go on about the increased density of Orewa under the unitary plan. Again, hypothetical bollocks that actually will not happen!. I live in one of those areas designated as high density, but I can tell you from all the new housing in my street and the area that high density will not happen here. New houses being built, 3 bed, SINGLE level, brick and tile… and sold before they are built so the demand is for retirement, simple houses, not high density. Even large full sized sections are selling for single level developments. These are brand new, have a life span of 50+ years, so there is nothing that will see them bowled for high density within the next 30 years. It simply won’t happen. Likewise there is no developers buying up sites to combine. The one or two well know local developers are doing brick and tile.

          South of the town centre, the few large sites that the likes of Hoppers brought up for highrise have now been sold down as individual sites, so that opportunity is gone for a number of years. The town centre is the same with the big development on the main road now dead and sold off to individual owners, so the face of orewa is pretty much set by economics as it is now, and while there might be a few apartments along the beach spawned by the new apartments going up, these will not happen for some time.

        7. And that’s the one single thing I hate about Orewa, the construction aimed at a single demographic. Those B&T places are horrid. The place could be an amazing playground similar to Coloundra but it doesn’t look like these small developers will allow it. The only med/high density is where I live and there will be 1,000 people here once it’s finished.

        8. I had a reason to go to Millwater last week. I hired a Cityhoppa and drove (had no other choice).

          One thing I noticed about Millwater is that while spread out, it looks very cycle friendly – but I saw no easy cycling link between there and Silverdale PnR – I hope that plus substantial bike parking goes in as this looks like the best way to serve Millwater.

          One other note is that with the New Network, I still would have driven there, as the bus hogs one end, and the wrong end from where I was going. Unless there were hire bikes at Silverdale, then I would have used one of those.

  2. Yeh that station is in a horrible place for anyone to walk too. Maybe extending NEX even to the so called centre would give it some walk up. Though tradeoff is getting stuck in traffic and making service unreliable.

    1. There is a solution. Keep the Park’n’Ride at Silverdale (and a stop), and add a station at the new Millwater on/off ramps.

      1. Bruce, can I ask what is wrong with a frequent shuttle through millwater linking it to the station and silverdale town centre?

        Whats so special about millwater as a suburb that it deserves the NEX dragged through it? I mean we don’t even take the NEX to Takapuna, nor Albany proper.

        1. Nothing other than the fact that people live there, as opposed to Silverdale. Happy to see it come into Orewa (in fact that would be awesome!) as an option but will need bus lanes on Hibiscus Coast Hwy. Just don’t stop it at the current Park’n’Ride. Zero walk up and not nice to ride to even.

  3. Why are majority of the routes starting with N, i seriously hope they don’t decide to use that as N is the typical suffix for niterider services, I was immediately confused by that..Plus in south auckland the new routes start with 3 mainly not S, please keep it consistent AT! Use 8 or 9 as the suffix not N.

    1. good question. I initially thought they were all nite rider services … and it does seem very inconsistent with the southern network changes.

      1. Me too, until I realized there were too many niterider services I finally caught on to them being day services, lol.

  4. Yeh the numbering is very messy compared to that proposed for South Network. N prefix confusing, plus keeping old numbers for expresses.

  5. And what about WARKWORTH, Leigh, Welsford? No bus services? Perhaps they deserve the RoNS treatment in that case as PT is not working there?

    1. to be fair they don’t have very many bus services now do they? But from what I understand the NN proposes a large expansion in coverage in these areas. Partly to connect with the extended NEX, so I expect they’ll do pretty well out of the proposed changes.

      Then again, some of the die-hard rail fans who read this blog would argue that buses are crap and we should run passenger rail from dinky rural environments at great expense even if they carry fewer passengers …

      1. Buses are crap, if they have to run in congested road corridors as the NW ones do right now with no date set for a NW busway.

      2. Yes, with no set date of the NW busway, or funding for it, getting the Kumeu trains running make complete sense. Except for the few die hard bus supporters who think the busway will be funded, built and running in 4 – 6 years time. Of course, with the sensible NZ First rail and transport plans released today, maybe it will be built as all roading projects will have new criteria which requires all roading projects to first be measured against PT alternatives. But to get that, you will have to vote NZ First.

  6. I’m glad to see that we’ve had two progress stories in one day. The constant evolution of PT in Auckland is encouraging.

    The revolution will occur when people get use to it and start demanding it.

  7. On a slightly different note Matt, a whole pile of new timetables for out West have just been released…

        1. Still waiting for those ten min frequencies on the Western Line as promised back 2009. Soon there’s going to be a whole lot of spare DMUs sitting around at Westfield as the Eastern Line goes electric…..?

  8. Not that keen on the setup between the pacific plaza and gulf harbour/army bay. What a waste of time those 2 trial services are. The arkles bay one is pathetic. Plus who wants to make 2 transfers to get to army bay.

  9. my daughter goes to silverdale school …i moved to maire road on the information given by early 2015 there will be a bus going to grand drive to silverdale .. auckland council have not said what they are going to do .. i do not drive …….. the school will not help at all to arrange to put her on a school bus that goes past my house caring silverdale passengers , school buses in orewa will not except my child on there bus carrying kingsway passengers …my child took ages to settle in silverdale when we first moved to jelas road 2 years ago so changing schools is not a option .. auckland transport get a move on ..

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