Letter from Wellington: a glow up for the Harbour Quays

This is a guest post from Wellington-based Kasey McDonnell, which originally appeared on their blog threesixtysix,. It is republished here with kind permission.

Boy am I horny for bus lanes.

Splash paint on a road, reserve it for buses that carry 70 people each, and you’ve instantly improved public transport.

Our city buses rock. They produce half the pollution of your average petrol car. Plus, you don’t need to pay attention to the road. Rather than trying not to hit kids or getting hit yourself, you can read, listen to a podcast, or brainrot before work.

Wellington buses carry tens of thousands of people a day, and they are transporting more people every year. By getting more people to catch buses instead of driving, we can reduce pollution and turn parking spaces into parks or homes.

In a gorgeous move, our councils are looking to boost our bus capacity with dedicated bus lanes on the Harbour Quays next year.

Every day, hospital workers like my sister-in-law will get to work faster and more reliably. Tourists to Wellington will have options to travel straight to Te Papa, the Town Hall, or Tākina. Each extra dollar invested in public transport will go further. We can add more useful services to Wellington suburbs. There is a bonanza of benefits.

Let’s get into it.

We have bus lanes across the city. More are on the way for the Harbour Quays.

Bus lanes bring better buses

Adding bus only lanes is a very effective way to get more people using public transport. They’re more effective than fares: price seems to matter less for motorists to switch than improving convenience and reliability.

We have some local evidence for this thanks to the last Government’s half price public transport policy in 2022. It didn’t inspire lots of people to ditch car keys for a bus card. The main people who benefited were people who already had good access to the bus or train.

“Non-users think of [public transport] services as unrealistic alternatives for travel, since they are not available in their area… or are going to take too long.”

The bus can take twice as long as driving, so no wonder improving service is a priority. Bus lanes speed up journeys, meaning each bus runs more services an hour. You can offer more bus services with the same budget.

Congestion goes down, too. People who switch from car to bus no longer contribute to traffic, leaving more room for drivers who need to drive.

Creating more space for better buses is a better system for current and future bus passengers.

The Harbour Quays in the 1900s were transformed by trams. Soon, they’ll transform for buses.

Hello, Harbour Quays

Back in the day, trams travelled down the Harbour Quays. I wouldn’t be surprised if the old steel lines still sit under the roads. Next year, assuming the next council doesn’t screw it up, public transport will return to the Quays and I’ll furiously celebrate.

First, the context: The Golden Mile is full – we can’t fit more buses in there without ruining the service quality. The Golden Mile can comfortably carry 80 buses an hour. Right now, we’re stuffing in 105.

We have a growing network, so we need space for far more buses. The plan is to add bus lanes along Jervois Quay, Customhouse Quay, Wakefield Street, and Cable Street to connect to Cambridge and Kent Terrace.

Routes like the Airport Express and Hospital Express will run along these lines – they’ll run about six minutes faster, too. Courtenay Place won’t be so congested, so travel times through there will become about three minutes faster.

The beautiful bus lanes coming to our city next year.

Progressive mayoral candidates want this project to happen. Both Andrew Little and Alex Baker have committed to these bus lanes if they become Mayor. With enough progressive people alongside them at Council, it will happen in 2026.

Despite the clear benefits, when Simeon Brown and the Coalition government were elected, they revoked $40m of funding for these lanes. This Government promised at the election to tackle climate change, yet their actions often seem to do the exact opposite. Take from that what you will.

When the Coalition cut the funding, councillors chose to cut the budget by 80% instead of finding the money elsewhere. The lost budget for this project means we’ll get basic bus stops without quality of life improvements. Hopefully there’ll be public support for improving that stuff when people have hooned down Wakefield Street in their beautiful, blisteringly fast bus.

Wellingtonians already take the bus at least seventy thousand times every single day. Bus lanes are a beautiful, affordable way to improve their trips and encourage tens of thousands more people to switch to public transport.

The Harbour Quays should just be the beginning. Imagine bus lanes through to Island Bay or along the Ngauranga Gorge.

The more bus lanes we build, the more of us can brainrot in peace knowing our commute has cut pollution. Who said we can’t have it all?

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