Improving the Western Bays buses

I’ve been living in Herne Bay for a few months now, and I use the buses here pretty often – usually return trips into town 2-3 days a week. Occasionally I also go on a bus later in the evening, or at the weekend. For Herne Bay, we are serviced by the 004/005 bus routes during the daylight hours of weekdays, and by the 017 bus route during evenings and weekends. It’s actually a split that works quite well I think – as during peak hour the 004/005 and the 015 provide a wide variety of routes when the higher patronage justifies them, while in the evening and at weekends the routes are all replaced by the 017, which takes a slightly more circuitous route but means that we still get reasonable frequencies (a bus every 20 minutes or 30 minutes).

However, being the kind of person that I am, I’m always thinking of ways in which bus services could be improved for people living in the area. And I think that there’s a pretty obvious way that the frequencies of the buses serving Herne Bay, and also the speed of buses servicing Point Chevalier, could both be improved. I shall explain further, but it’s probably a good idea to set the scene by showing a couple of route diagram maps. First, the Herne Bay buses:

The 012/018 buses are pretty irrelevant (although the 012 could also potentially benefit from my suggested changes) as they serve Newmarket, and I’m mainly focusing on ways in which accessibility between the Western Bays of Auckland City and the CBD could be improved. As I explained above, the two main routes here are the 005 and the 017. At peak times there are some 004 buses, which is essentially just a shortened version of the 005 route (I think people travelling to Westmere have an express option that goes via Williamson Ave to choose instead). But basically, the 005 provides a pretty direct link between Westmere and the CBD: via West End Road, Jervois Road and Victoria Street. The 017 meanders a bit more through Freemans Bay, but is still a reasonably good link between the two places.

Now, let’s look at the Point Chevalier buses – most specifically the 045 and 043 routes, which are outlined in the map below:

This is a pretty straightforward service – with the 045 route operating 7 days a week and providing a pretty good service between Point Chevalier and the city. Service frequencies aren’t too bad – a bus every 20 minutes off-peak on weekdays and one every half-hour at weekends, and there are even a few express buses during the morning and evening peak. The 043 bus turns south at Point Chevalier and links with Unitec and Mt Albert shops. The 043 only runs on weekdays and only outside the peak hours. One thing of particular note with the 043/045 route is for the majority of their journeys they run along Great North Road – along with about 20 million other bus routes. In fact, nearly every bus that services West Auckland runs along this stretch of Great North Road. So the service frequencies from Point Chevalier shops into the CBD are fantastic, pretty much no matter what time of day it is – simply because a massive number of bus routes converge along this stretch of road.

Now, for how I would change things. Essentially, I would do away with the vast array of different routes we have through this part of the city and cut it back to two routes – which are shown as the red route and the blue route on the map below: Now the red route would definitely be the primary route here – and is basically just an extension of the 005 to Pt Chevalier Beach. The blue route allow a link between Unitec (a tertiary education provider for those who don’t know) and the Western Bays, and would also supplement the red route. It also follows the route of the 015/017 through Freemans Bay – so possibly could run on weekends (perhaps terminating at Pt Chevalier shops rather than Mt Albert as there wouldn’t be Unitec students to serve).

Now, if we combine the resources currently used on the 005 and the 045 routes during the weekday interpeak time we could have a bus running along the combined red/blue areas every 10 minutes. At peak times it might be possible to have a bus every 5-7 minutes without actually requiring many (or any) additional resources. Whilst I’m still not sure whether I’d retain the blue route on evenings and weekends, or just realign the red route to more closely follow the current route of the 017 bus, combining the frequencies of the current 017 and 045 routes could also mean a bus  every 10-15 minutes  during these times.

I guess one has to weigh up the pros and cons of making these changes. I think the pros are pretty clear – that with the same number of services as are run at present you could get vastly improved service frequencies through the core of the route – Pt Chevalier to Ponsonby. It would also potentially be much simpler – different routes only, rather than the four or five different routes we have at the moment. It would create a direct bus link between Pt Chevalier and Ponsonby that doesn’t really exist at the moment (only on the pretty pathetic 010 route). I think there’s a pretty good chance that a trip from Pt Chevalier beach to the CBD would be faster along this route than it is at the moment – as the 005 from Westmere to Britomart at peak hour takes around 25 minutes compared to 35 minutes on the 045 from Pt Chevalier Beach to Britomart, and I can’t imagine it taking 10 minutes from Pt Chev beach to Westmere.

If we look at the potential cons, the obvious one is a reduction in services along Great North Road. But as I said right at the start of this – there are already a tonne of buses that go along Great North Road, between the city and Pt Chevalier. So I don’t really think there’s much of a loss there. One other potential issue is a lack of bus lanes along West End Road and Meola Road, whereas they do exist along Great North Road. I agree this is an issue, and could mean less reliable times between Pt Chevalier and the city. However, this could be solved by widening Meola Road (the most congested) a bit and installing bus lanes. Another potential issue is how to deal with the 017 issue – although perhaps that could best be solved by just running a basic 015 service all the time, with some of the resources saved from lumping together the Pt Chev and Herne Bay buses being directed at keeping this service going in the evenings at on the weekend.

I think the main benefits would be improved frequencies and greater simplification, and they would be significant benefits. Once a bus service reaches the point of having “a bus every 10 minutes” then people stop worrying about timetables and just turn up. This generally leads to significant boosts in patronage. Great North Road does not need the extra buses, the Western Bays do.

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