Why diverting buses to Maungawhau is a bad idea

Over the last three years the Mayor has come up with a few transport ideas that might sound good at first but just don’t make practical sense – his Harbour Crossing proposal is a classic example – and he’s just added another to his list: diverting buses from nearby arterial routes directly to Maungawhau station. As reported by Stuff:

Auckland mayor Wayne Brown is calling for urgent changes to be made to Maungawhau Station ahead of its opening as part of the City Rail Link.

The station, which was formerly known as Mt Eden Station, will play a significant role in the new network, linking the 3.45km tunnel with the existing train tracks and stations.

Brown is concerned about the design because buses won’t stop outside the station on Ruru Street, so people will need to walk 250m from New North Road or Mt Eden Road to catch a train.

There will be no designated pick-up or drop-off space for private vehicles, although there will be access for Uber drivers.

At a Transport Resilience and Infrastructure Committee meeting on Thursday, Brown laid out his issues with the current plans of the station.

“I have been very disappointed at what was going on at Maungawhau,” Brown said.

“You’ve got a major railway station you can’t get to by car, you walk in the rain, you couldn’t get an ambulance there, a fire engine or a bus.

“It’s centred between two major roads off New North Road and Mt Eden Road.”

Brown says he has devised a way for there to be a through road by the station and has given this to Auckland Transport, who are looking into it.

Firstly, the Mayor is simply wrong about access to the station. Stuff has since updated the article with quotes from CRL about how access to the station is allowed for emergency services, drop off, etc, and that they have operational plans to respond to emergencies.

“The designs for Maungawhau Station and its precinct have always included access for all emergency service vehicles. FENZ, Hato Hone St John and Police have been engaged in the design.

“Operational plans to respond to emergencies in the station have also been developed. Auckland Transport can control traffic signals remotely to prioritise emergency vehicle traffic if necessary.

“A comprehensive programme of preparatory exercises is being delivered in collaboration with FENZ, NZ Police and Hato Hone in advance of CRL’s opening in 2026 to ensure evacuation of the station in an emergency.

[…]

…to be clear, the current proposal does have pick-up and drop-off areas for taxis, ubers and private vehicles provided at the station.

“Accessible drop-off is even closer to the station on the same section of the street, with a roll-up kerb to accommodate easier access to the footpath . Universal access routes to the station are provided from Ngahura Street via a shared walking and cycling path and from Mt Eden Road through the new walking and cycling link.”

Having buses connect to train stations is generally a good idea, but as always, the devil is in the details – and I think that in this situation, it doesn’t make sense. Here’s why:

Diverting buses unnecessarily is bad

The sections of New North Rd and Mt Eden Rd that pass close to Maungawhau Station carry some of Auckland’s busiest bus routes, with New North Rd, Sandringham Rd, Dominion Rd and Mt Eden Rd buses passing by here. Combined, these routes carried around 7.3 million trips in the year to the end of March – that’s about 11% of all bus trips in Auckland.

Especially at peak times, these buses are full of people, the majority of whom will be travelling to the city centre for work or study. Diverting buses to go past the station likely adds 300-400 metres to bus journeys. That might not sound like a lot, but combined with the need to navigate additional signalised intersections it probably adds at least two minutes, possibly more, to the journey times for millions of trips.

Adding time to journeys is the opposite of what we should be doing if we want more people to be using public transport. If anything, Dominion Rd buses should use Ian McKinnon Dr (removing the existing deviation to Mt Eden Rd), which would speed up services.

In addition, longer journey times could increase operational costs, especially it means additional services need to be run to maintain frequencies.

But what about bus-train transfers?

Transferring from one service to another plays a key role in our public transport system, so diverting buses might be acceptable if doing so opened up significant new travel opportunities. But Maungawhau doesn’t do this.

For a start, the station is primarily only going to serve Western Line trains, and those trains will be at their busiest at Maungawhau. Yes – there will be some semblance of a crosstown train route, but it will be too infrequent for people to be transferring to it in large numbers.

People on Sandringham Rd buses can easily transfer to the train at Kingsland, while New North Rd bus users could also do this at Morningside, Mt Albert or even Avondale.

With the CRL open, the Western Line will be linked to the Eastern Line – so once that’s up and running, the main value of a transfer at Maungawhau would be for people on Dominion Rd or Mt Eden Rd buses who want to go somewhere out along the Western Line or Eastern Line.

People will still be able to make that transfer, but it won’t be a huge source of current or future demand. So doesn’t balance out delaying millions of other trips to achieve this.

What about transfers to the city?

There is occasionally a suggestion that citybound people will hop off buses and transfer to CRL trains on the edge of the central city. I think what is driving this view comes from the idea that trains are always a better choice or a faster ride.

Yes, people will transfer if it meaningfully quickens their end-to-end journey time, or if their final stop is more conveniently located. But this is unlikely to be the case here for many people.

By train, the time between Maungawhau Station to Te Waihorotiu Station is estimated to be 6 minutes, whereas the journey time for the #25 bus on Mt Eden Road is 10-11 minutes. So at a glance it might look quicker to get off the bus and hop onto the train for your journey to the heart of the city.

However, making this transfer would also involve the time it takes you to get to/ from the platforms at each end, some of which are very deep. For example, it currently takes at least two minutes to get from the platforms at Britomart out to Te Komititanga. Plus there’s the minutes spent waiting for a train to arrive, unless you’re super lucky with your timing.

As a result, in most cases the travel time is likely to end up similar to if you’d just stayed on the bus, so most people won’t bother.

Also, people forget that city centre buses don’t just go to Queen Street – they stop at many other places throughout the city centre, such as Wynyard Quarter and the Universities. For many passengers the New North Road and Mt Eden buses will always be the best way to get to their destination, so it’s important that they remain fast, direct and legible.

A 250m walk to transfer between services isn’t that uncommon

Easy transfers, where you step off one service and almost immediately onto another, are obviously ideal – but not always practical. So having a short walk is common, here and in many cities overseas. A perfect example of a transfer of this length in Auckland is between trains at Britomart and the NX1 buses on Lower Albert St. At best, if you’re right at the front of a train you’ve got at least a 280m walk to reach the NX1 bus stops, and for parts of that walk you’re exposed to the elements.

So for Maungawhau (and probably elsewhere too), installing canopies along the popular walking routes between the nearby main roads and the station is probably a cheaper and easier long-term solution than diverting all buses.

This is an important example of how buses and trains work together as a network. Making connections between the services should be as seamless as possible without undermining the usefulness of either mode. Leaving buses on the existing main routes achieves this the best.

It impacts development capacity

Putting aside the question of the value of transferring here, there is also the question of how it would work in practical terms. The current spatial plan for Maungawhau has most of the site planned for development, supported by a number of smaller access streets. The topography of the site, the planned street widths and the desired future land uses simply aren’t well suited for use by some of the city’s busiest bus routes.

To divert buses would require significant changes to this plan, and that would likely reduce the overall development potential as there would be less land available for buildings.

This spatial plan is already in the process of being implemented, as can clearly be seen in this image. How much more would it cost to change these plans now?

A wider view is also available in the latest drone flyover.

What the council would be better to focus on here is ensuring that the development on these sites can be maximised. This area was left off the council’s response to the government’s National Policy Statement on Urban Development which requires more density around train stations; and the site is also impacted by various view shafts. Addressing this angle could help ensure we’re getting the most from this important site.

In short, I get where the Mayor is coming from, and in a perfect world it would be easier to transfer at Maungawhau – but a 250 metre walk is not far. Given Maungawhau’s location in the city, and within the transport network, few will want to make the transfer here when in it would make more sense somewhere else.

This post, like all our work, is brought to you by the Greater Auckland crew and made possible by generous donations from our readers and fans. If you’d like to support our work, you can join our circle of supporters here, or support us on Substack!

Share this