It has now been nearly 6 months since Auckland Transport opened their first bus lane. This was one Fanshawe Street, and followed a suggestion from this blog back in February. We were very impressed with Auckland Transport’s initiative in moving quickly on this, and it took less than 4 months from blog to bus lane. No doubt this was due to board chair Lester Levy following things up.

When the Fanshawe bus lane was announced Lester Levy promised that this was the sign of a new way of doing things.

Dr Levy says increasingly Auckland Transport needs to have pragmatic, interim solutions in place while working towards the more time consuming, ideal and more complete solutions – this response is a good example of this type of approach.

Fanshawe Day1
Fanshawe Street bus lane on day 1 of operation, April 28

However since April it seems to be business as usual for Auckland Transport with no progress being made on any new bus lanes, and nothing even seeming to have made it to consultation phase. A few months ago there were some promising lines in the AT Board reports. This from July:

Improvements for implementation this financial year to bus lane / prioritising for the proposed high frequency bus network are being developed.

This similar statement was in the August 26 and October 2 meetings:

Improvements for implementation this financial year to bus lane / prioritising for the proposed high frequency bus network are being finalised.

However in the October 28 report nothing was mentioned at all.

This is somewhat worrying. The period around Christmas and January seems like a good time to get any work done due to low traffic volumes. It would be great to have any new bus lanes in place for the annual March madness when tertiary institutions start their semesters. Therefore any consultation would need to get done quickly.

There is no shortage of obvious candidates for bus lanes on busy routes around the city, so here are a few to get AT started:

Onewa Road Transit Lane:

First there is the Onewa Road westbound Transit Lane. This project was even consulted earlier this year (following a failed consultation several years prior). The design is done, and this even has a full project page on the Auckland Transport website. However there are no hints of any progress.

onewa_road_new_500x699
Auckland Transport plan for Onewa Road Transit Lanes

The blog has also already outlined in detail a few priority streets in previous posts.

Upper Symonds Street:

I described the desperate need for improvements on Upper Symonds St in March. There is no city-bound bus lane between Mt Eden and Karangahape Roads despite there being 182 buses in the 2 hour morning peak, or one every 40 seconds. This leads to severe delays, on a bad day I hear it is quicker to walk 40 minutes from Mt Eden to the University rather than catch the bus, largely caused by congestion of buses around Upper Symonds.

Mt Eden Road:

I described the need for a bus lane along Mt Eden Road in detail in May. Despite perceptions, Mt Eden Road only has bus lanes along 30% of the total 10km (5km each way) route length from Mount Albert Road to Upper Symonds Street. In peak hours there is a bus at least every 3 minutes along this section, and the lack of bus lanes cause severe delays. Another simple issue is that parts of the bus lane only operate from 4.30pm to 5.30pm. This means that if you catch the very busy 5.05pm from Britomart, the bus lanes won’t be operating when you get to Mt Eden village!

There are plenty more obvious areas, however here are a few quick ones I know from around the city.

Park Road and Khyber Pass Road:

The Central Connector was the flagship project for bus transport in Auckland City in the mid 2000’s, and was supposed to provide a very high quality public transport link from Britomart to Newmarket via the University and Hospital. The Symonds Street section is generally good, however as soon as you get across Grafton Brdige is is back to usual with a few stop start lanes, especially heading towards Newmarket. On Park Road by the Domain, 15 carparks are seen to be much more important than thousands of bus passengers. The same issue is seen on Khyber Pass, where the buslanes only go part way along, and then parking is seen as more important for the last 300 metres towards Newmarket.

Park Road buslanes
5pm bus jam outside the hospital. Congestion caused by a handful of carparks immediately south of here.

New North Road:

The bus lanes along New North Road do no begin until west of the Dominion Road flyover, before this is just a peak time clearway. Then they only run for 500 metres until just before the Sandringham Road intersection before they become a clearway again. Very simple to change these clearways to give consistent bus lanes from Newton to Morningside.

Sandringham Road:

Similar issues as to Mt Eden Road. Listed as having bus lanes, however there are still plenty of gaps which cause significant bus congestion.

Constellation Drive interchange:

While Northern Express buses can fly up to from Britomart to Constellation Station in just over 20 minutes, it can take almost as much time to travel the last 5 kilometres to Albany station. This is largely caused by the need to exit the station, travel along Constellation Drive, under the motorway and enter the northbound on-ramp. While the obvious solution is extending the busway to Albany, in the short term things could be improved with a combination of bus lanes and smart traffic signaling helping the buses get through.

Constellation Drive buslanes
Constellation Drive. 2 buses can be seen stuck in traffic, having just left Constellation Station bound for Albany.

I would also be keen to hear a few more readers suggestions about places where buses get severely congested at peak times, and bus lanes could be built to help sort the issues quickly and easily.

Bus lanes are the best value investments that Auckland Transport can make that help people get around our city. Sorting out these 7 heavily used bus corridors would help tens of thousands of commuters each day. Not only would this reduce journey times, but also improve service reliability and reduce costs for bus operators and Auckland Transport.

So why not get on to it Auckland Transport, would be great to see progress over summer, and we look forward to congratulating you on more implementation of bus lanes.

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70 comments

  1. In Onewa Rd in the afternoons it only takes a dozen cars parked on the entire length of the westbound kerbside to stuff up traffic for the entire length of the road, buses included.

    1. Agreed. I’m not sure why it’s taking so long for such a simple issue to get sorted? Is the florist and the petrol stations that are complaining that they’ll loose business there? C’mon. Let’s get it moving!!!

    2. Looking at the design, one car lane will be removed. No wonder the residence will disagree. They need to at least keep the existing lanes.

  2. The Fanshawe St bus lane is gone too now. Some kind of road works going on (dare to say transpower again ???) – have the lane practically closed as the buses can’t fit onto it anymore. Hopefully this will be finished soon…

    1. No it’s AT rebuilding the kerb and channel as part of works for the upcoming Fanshawe St rehabilitation works. They also say it’s only closed in the mornings/during the day and is open again for afternoon peak.

      1. Thanks for that. In practice, now the lane is too skinny for the buses to fit, if the car lane is blocked. I hope they get it done fast.

  3. Could not agree more. Step to it, Auckland Transport. These are cheap, easy, and almost all are uncontroversial.

    Perhaps they’re distracted?

  4. can yellow no stopping lines be painted on the bus lanes? On Symonds Street I constantly see drivers stopping in them, and they always get away with it, because the council camera people don’t ticket them. It seems to me that painting yellow no-stopping lines is the cheapest and simplest solution to this problem…

      1. with the council on a campaign to remove as much signage as possible (visual pollution), I think that yellow no stopping dotted lines are probably the best compromise out there. People are ignorant that bus lanes are not for parking, stopping or dropping of – no stopping lines would be the end of their excuses for not knowing.

  5. Onewa Rd is terrible from about 0630 to 0900 and it can take easily 25 minutes + to go down it. But evening peak it’s nowhere near as bad as there are alternatives such as Stafford Rd and bypassing it using Maritime Tce as well as a lot of traffic going via Exmouth Rd or Lake Rd, so the bus lane need isn’t really required. In fact it will become a problem for traffic should they bus lane the other side so I can understand why AT haven’t done anything. And I promise buses just pull out in front of traffic regardless of safety anyway from stops so there’s no hold ups for them, rather the other way.
    What AT MUST do with Onewa Rd is enforce the existing bus lane T3 rules properly rather than the half arsed way they currently do as there are far too many single occupant cars flouting the lane rules and getting away with it.

    1. Same argument used against building bus lanes for all the other bus lanes in the city for the last decade. Once they build it, it becomes clear that it was so needed. I’d be tempted to suggest that westbound T3 could work here. But either way I’ll be a happy commuter when this gets implemented

      1. What argument? It flows and quite efficiently given the volume of traffic and I can say first hand there is next to no hold up on a bus peak heading up Onewa and I put this down to it being largely one wide lane. Perhaps a total clearway would help but thats about it..

    2. Onewa does get congested at night. Not as bad as the morning but it can be a slow ride. I think a T2 would be suitable, though most cars would just stick to the car lane due to continuous stopping by buses.

      The volume of buses to be using Onewa road is set to increase.

      1. >The volume of buses to be using Onewa road is set to increase

        Do you know something, or is it just a guess?

        1. Nothing specific but frequency is meant to increase under PTOM. I also heard they want to increase frequency in anticipation as PTOM is still a few years away.

  6. Manukau Road – nothing at all. Even if there was a buslane until Greenlane Road would be fantastic.
    And…. why can’t bus lanes be active until 6.30pm – as busy roads are quite often still congested then.
    And…and…and…. bus lanes are no use unless there are no cars parked or driving in them. New North Rd/Sandringham Road is a shocker for parked cars every day, often further along the road where AT do not monitor, but which cause backups all the same.

    Another solution would be if Auckland, like Australia, had a bylaw, or even law to give buses priority, especially when exiting bus stops. Would help in areas where bus frequency isn’t high, but busy lanes cause delays.

      1. I think most of the central isthmus bus lanes need to be 7 AM to 7 PM 7 days a week. And if you are going to do that, you may as well make them 24 hours (avoids the hassle of towing people every morning and marking out carparks).
        Dominion road northbound seems especially busy on weekends, I think if the bus had dedicated lanes and was quicker than taking the car it would get a lot more use.

    1. +1 to making bus lanes active till 6.30pm or 7. I quite often ride down Dominion Rd around 7, and bus lanes are absolutely still needed, but they’re full of parked cars.

    2. Yes please!

      Although I don’t bus along Manukau Road, I would love to bike to Newmarket station, and Manukau Road is near flat from Mt Albert Road all the way to the top of Parnell Rise. I’ve biked it twice, but I am not a confident enough cyclist to deal with the traffic without some sort of reserved lane.

  7. Excellent post. Bus lanes in these high frequency areas should be a No1 priority.With less stoppages in congestion, faster times, more frequencies will lead to booming patronage. Do we want more congestion, disadvantaging PT users, fumes/pollution, over investment/urban destruction to widen unnecessarily and only in places. It is time for reprioritising the existing road network working backwards from the highest frequencies so the lanes are used to the maximum-no bits here and there but coherant entire lengths where possible. AT you have governance/control of the road reserve (non state highway) -boundary to boundary time to punch harder and smarter . Needs of the many should outweigh needs of the few.

  8. Times should definitely be longer as well. 6:30-9:30am, and 4-7pm would suit most corridors. In some areas they should be made all-day, as constant low level congestion justifies it.

  9. That 4:30 to 5:30 Mt Eden Rd clearway is the funniest; perfectly timed to be no use for either the post-school rush nor the post-work one! Almost certainly the result of consultation and compromise.

    1. Patrick, the problem is that there are words associated with absence of consultation and compromise, none of them pretty.

    2. From time to time, I will get off at Mt Eden village to buy a few groceries or a bottle of wine, but it is always a gamble when the next bus will come along to complete my journey. The Mt Eden merchants would get more bus customers taking a brief stop at their business if the bus arrivals were more predictable i.e. roughly the same headway as when they left Britomart

  10. it’d be good to see more bus lanes along east coast rd on the shore. currently there’s only one section of bus lane, but surely any part of the rd which goes to two lanes could become another section of bus lane? Even though it wouldn’t be continuous would at least allow the buses to get ahead for that part. The two lanes to one lane and back again for cars always seems to mess the traffic up.

    Would also be good to see buses given priority/ their own lane coming up to traffic lights. I find it incredible in this city how every set of traffic lights – even on minor rds – has a diff lane depending on which direction the traffic is turning. Really is overkill. But could re purpose some of those lanes for buses and then at least they could get ahead of cars at those points. Should be a quick fix as well compared to full bus lanes.

  11. +1 “But could re purpose some of those lanes for buses and then at least they could get ahead of cars at those points.”

  12. Customs Street East to Anzac Ave: Desperately needs a bus lane to the start of the Central Connector
    Quay Street westwards between Commerce Street and Britomart: bus lane currently stops at Commerce Street for some reason
    Tangihua Street to Quay Street: bus can’t turn into bus lane if there are cars in the adjacent lane. A bus lane you can’t turn into is as useful as no bus lane. However, footpath is plenty wide here to steal a bit to give the bus more room to turn.
    Symonds Street/Grafton Bridge intersection outbound: Busses travelling straight through the intersection have to pull out of the Connector lane into the (usually occupied) adjacent traffic lane, and then pull back into the Connector lane across the other side of the intersection for bus stop there. The radical solution would be to permanently close the Mway entrance here, but there must be a way to give busses priority over cars.

  13. Eastbound on Tamaki Drive from Tamaki Boat Club to the Mission House carpark entrance. The bus in the evenings crawl along Tamaki Drive often as far back as Kelly Taltons. There would be a few carparks removed in the peaktime however, there is plenty parking nearby. Between December and March each year it become even worse with people heading to the beach in the evening after work. When I’m on the bus stuck in traffic it seems crazy that there isn’t a bus lane as it wouldn’t effect business, resident parking or remove car lanes.

  14. Great article and let’s hope AT listens. I cycle some days now because I never know if the bus will get caught up in the slow snail run because of a lack of bus lanes.
    How typical of AT – when the political pressure is on over an issue such as this, they do one bus lane and make a huge fuss about it to kill of the debate. Then months later we wake up and wonder what happened to all the other bus lanes that were promised at the time but never happened. The absence in the latest agenda is no doubt because they think we have now forgotten.
    Let’s keep putting the pressure on. If it wasn’t for Luke and Transport Blog Fanshawe wouldn’t have happened. AT seemed to get lots of credit for it in the minds of those who didn’t know the background but remember until then, there had been no bus lane done by AT in its history.
    AT is too scared of taking away parking places outside shops and upsetting the shopkeepers.

  15. Parnell Road from the Cathedral to the roundabout at the start of Broadway.

    As with other examples above, a handful of parked cars stop the buses getting into the bus stops. Such unnecessary parking along this stretch as virtually every business has drive-on access to parking in front of the building, and the handful of others have parking in adjacent side streets.

    Not that parking should be sacred anyway. Really, along here the hundreds of passengers on the Inner Link, Outer Link, 635, 645 and 655 surely merit priority.

  16. The Transport portfolio of the Waitematā Local Board received an update recently on proposals for bus lanes on Park Road (alongside the Domain) and Parnell Road from the Cathedral through the Ayr St intersection towards Newmarket. Consultation is about to get underway. The Upper Symonds Street bus lane improvements should also be very close too.

    1. Thanks for the update Pippa. Just wish AT would promote good work they are doing rather than being scared of controversy!

  17. There is a disconnect between Auckland Council, Mayor Len, His Councillors, Auckland Transport etc to enable, or get these projects delivered upon. The Constellation Drive item does need urgent attention so who is dragging that Chain?

  18. You’ve identified most of the ones I would have listed, but how about from the airport to the Hillsborough Road interchange? It’s bad enough that rail to the airport seems to be so low a priority, but let’s not rub salt in. I think there is an extra road lane planned, just paint it green.

  19. A similar post could be done for cycle lanes. In not sure what the timetable is for K Road but Carlton Gore Road seems to have stalled. It’s just waiting a coat of paint

    1. Pretty sure they’ve been canned in preference of keeping parking. CAA did a few posts recently about how AT have been more or less cancelling any and all projects that benefit people walking or on a bike if there’s any loss of parking or if anyone and their dog complains about said loss of parking.

  20. Broadway is a nightmare for buses at peak time. A few parking spaces where a bus lane could be both northbound and southbound in the area from khyber pass road to remuera road. Ideally, carrying on onto khyber pass, and down manukau road, but broadway at least deserves bus lanes with the amount of buses that go down it.

  21. The bus lane needs to be continued right to the bottom of Anzac Ave where it meets with Beach Rd, at present two right turning lanes take priority over the hundreds of buses that come down here – meaning it’s usually quicker to get off the bus on Symonds Street and walk to Britomart than it is to stay on it.
    Another spot is the intersection of Waterloo Quadrant and Symonds Street/Anzac Ave, the buslane here is replaced with two lanes for cars, and only continues again further past the intersection. These two lanes are frequently filled with cars, meaning the buses are stuck at the lights on Symonds Street, despite the buslane just past the intersection and down Anzac Ave being clear.
    In both these cases the issue lies with bus lanes ending prior to an intersection, for the Central Connector this really makes a mockery of the whole thing, hundreds of buses are relegated to second class citizens such that people in cars get their own straight ahead and right/left turn lanes. Would be extremely simple to make these changes and would have major time savings for bus passengers.
    And one shouldn’t forget Customs Street from Beach Rd west, it consistently takes longer to travel this stretch by bus than it does from K’Rd to Beach Rd.

    There are so many quick fixes that should have been done yesterday and the fact they haven’t and how obvious they are to anyone who uses buses around Auckland really just shows how out of touch AT are and how quite clearly no one who has any power there catches buses.

    1. yes I agree: The two right-turning lanes for cars from Beach into Anzac seem silly given that the left hand lane quickly runs into a bus stop which soon thereafter becomes a bus lane. Why not force the cars to merge before the intersection, thereby creating space for a bus only right turn lane?

    2. “clearly no one who has any power there catches buses.”

      Yes,at the auckland conversation events when they get an AT CEO or COO to do an intro it always seems to start with a confession rhat they never catch PT themselves.

  22. What is happening along Te Atatu Road towards the North-Western motorway in terms of bus lanes. It is quite normal for us regular bus passengers to be stuck in traffic, with our bus driver taking enormous risks to pick up passengers waiting at bus stops by weaving between lanes and often stopping in the fast lane to pick up passengers. Equally ridiculous is the T2 lane on the Western-Motorway lane to the motorway on ramp. Because of the time it takes for traffic lights to change, allowing the bus to get on the motorway, bus drivers often cut across lanes to use the faster (none T2) lanes onto the motorway.

  23. Bus lanes are the biggest bang for buck to improve Aucklands public transport network. It is frustrating that AT don’t seem at all interested in anything that costs less than $50 million to implement.
    We hear the council harping on about fixing public transport, yet PT is still considered less important than parking out the front of shops (how dare we inconvenience car users and make them walk 50 metres from a side street just to significantly improve our PT system!)
    If AT aren’t going to apply common sense, how about an independent review on the best economic use for the land in front of those shops rather than just assuming the best use is for carparking?
    AT seem to have so many long term plans that won’t be implemented until most of us are dead, but the simple immediate fixes that are looking them right in the face seem to be ignored.

  24. There needs to be a general policy that says arterial roads are for moving vehicles (cars, trucks, buses, bicycles) not for storing parked vehicles. That should be the starting assumption so that parking is given the lowest priority on those roads.

    AT should then nominate streets it wants to designate as arterials using people per day (note: people not vehicles) travelling on that corridor. There can be consultation over that and people can argue as to why a certain street should/n’t be an arterial.

    People talk about a battle for space between people in cars, on buses or on bicycles. But 90% of the time the battle is for space that is not currently occupied by a person but by an empty metal box. We need to give that very unproductive use of land the lowest priority.

    I really don’t understand how that can be argued with on arterial, high traffic roads. It should just be a basic tenet of the debate and in which consultation takes place.

    1. Completely agree. Designate them arterials so that people know sometime in the next 1-10 years, all parking will be removed. That allows people to plan and removes any expectation people have that parking is there as of right.

    2. Like Franklin Road? I went along to the consultation and was told that we needed parking on both sides of the road, otherwise it would look unsymmetrical. (But apparently a bike lane on one side of the road looks symmetrical enough).

      1. Having people answering questions with an IQ of over 50 would help. That must be the worst answer I have ever heard.

        On the other hand, no problem with parking on both sides. Just take away some of the carriageway to fit in separated cycle lane which will narrow the road and also slow all the traffic down. Win, win for everyone!

        What’s that AT? Not possible? No, cycling has to “compromise” (AT code for “get nothing”) here but no other mode? What a surprise!

  25. Agree-this consultation on one by one projects is obviously not working and really what rights do the shop owners have on road space that ratepayers have paid for and they don’t even pay rent on. Make it global just like a tenancy if the landlord needs the space for their own uses give 42 days notice or 90 days if otherwise. Landlords don’t consult about it, they own it,they can make changes. Reprioritising existing road space with paint etc has got to be one of the fastest/ sustainable/cheap way of making improvements to the entire network.

  26. When heading north over the harbour bridge, let buses use the onera road exit and then join up to the bus lane that is on the motorway shoulder. Would just require removing some road markers.

    1. That is a very good idea, wondered about that myself. Northbound bus lanes along Northern Motorway and through to Akoranga are very poor, and should be easy to fix.

  27. Is any thought given to the width of bus lanes? Pitt Street, for example, has a bus lane but often, bus drivers are not confident to pass traffic with it, in fear of the parking lane to the left.

  28. Hurstmere, Kitchener and East Coast Road on the Shore could definitely do with a clearway/buslane in rush hours. You can often walk faster than all the single commuter cars. Could also do with reducing the number of bus stops – some are throwing distance from one another.

  29. I think a bit part of the problem is that Auckland Transport/NZTA/MOT heads-(not all but most ) believe that vehicles (buses/trains etc) that carry more than 5 people are not the most efficient ways of moving people-or this thinking just does not compute. Im sick of reading well 80% or so use cars currently so that where money should be spent-well maybe that because we have spent all our money catering for cars and trucks in the past. The fact is if we had a smart network-a rapid skeleton and a bus network with priority (yes not catering to shop owners or priority to low occupancy vehicles) we could really change this thing around around. Thinking big-like the congestion free network and the future bus network and actually making the best of all the transport assets/corridors we do have. We still collectively are not on the same page and competing in different directions for space, investment money one project at a time etc which is why we have budget blowout and barely still just getting minor bits of this rapid transit network off the ground. Can we all not agree that we need to move a lot of people smarter all around Auckland and providing these efficient choices widespread is actually what we all need including those who choose to drive small occupancy vehicles.This post just highlights this with Auckland Transport acheiving one bus lane and larger scale improvements awaiting capex rather than just getting buses moving and making the most of the 1000 buses we do have. Even things like AMETI- Pakuranga Highway is pretty wide already why not try green paint on one lane.

  30. Even the motorway system-having a shared bus/truck lane in smart places would boost both public transport and freight overnight. We need more interim/smart thinking outside the box and just implementing things with things we already have. Sure capex should go to rapid transport in the huge majority and prioritised where most patronage will increase but these things all take time. A mandate needs to be widespread. Public Transport should have rights over the entire network. With freight even these could be exclusive in places if we were smart.

  31. Why does the bus lane heading west on Quay Street stop at Commerce Street? This is about 75m before the bus depot turning left into britomart. Every morning the bus has to make a run for it at the lights, to squeeze between cars and then turn left. Why stop a bus lane, just before its destination? There is parking along that stretch which contractors have been using while they refurb the corner building. Here’s hoping the parking is removed and converted to a bus lane.

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