I have been hearing that ARTA’s “b.line” initiative, which actually amounted to little more than putting up a few signs at bus stops and on buses, has led to significant increases in patronage, in the region of 20% according to some, on Dominion Road and Mt Eden Road bus routes in the last couple of months. It will obviously take a while to see whether those patronage increases are simply seasonal (public transport patronage jumps around quite a bit throughout the year depending on whether university is on holiday or not).
Assuming that the increases are long-lasting, then this would certainly allay my fears that the “under-promising” (saying buses every 15 minutes when they’re actually every 5-10 minutes) might actually do more harm than good. It also shows the importance of making public transport easy to understand: something that b.line really really focuses on. If such significant gains can be achieved so relatively easily and cheaply – remember that there have been no additional bus services (although there have been some new buses), no lengthening of bus lanes, basically nothing at all to improve the quality of the service apart from the new stock – then the question that comes into my mind now is “where to next?” Dominion and Mt Eden road services were a pretty easy target to start with, as they run at very high frequencies all day long and were already very well used.
A few possibilities come to mind (just looking at the isthmus area for now), and are shown in the map below. The existing two b-line services are shown in black (green is the rail network), with the possible additions being in gold:
The three routes would be along Sandringham Road, Great North Road and Remuera Road. All of these routes have fairly high frequencies at the moment, so you would probably effectively see the kind of gains that we’re getting out of Mt Eden Road and Dominion Road: increased patronage but not really a better public transport system.
Personally, I’d like to see some effort going in to creating a cross-town B.Line service. Probably the Carrington Road/Mt Albert Road corridor is the most likely for such a service to work, linking together many north-south route across the isthmus, then continuing on to Onehunga, Sylvia Park and Pakuranga. Pretty much like the blue “Route 3” in map below:
One of the main reasons people are put off using cross-town services is because they have notoriously poor frequencies (and are generally very unreliable in their time-keeping). The beauty of having an effective cross-town service would be that you have the beginnings of a true “public transport network”, and can start to take advantage of the network effect, even if just to a relatively small extent for now.
Over time it would be great to have the whole route network shown above as “b-line” services. That will obviously require a bit more funding, and some pretty hard decisions in simplifying the bus network, but for now it would be great to have the radial routes supplemented by a true cross-town “Quality Transit Network” – it would be the first step towards actually achieving what is stated in so many of our public transport plans.
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Its a bit hard to see the gold lines against the yellow of the major arterial roads.
Sandringham Rd and Remuera Rd should be fairly easy as there are already bus lanes there however I do think something needs to be done about Gt North Rd between Avondale and Waterview before that could really become a B Line. I am having to drive unfortunately at the moment and my trip takes me along here, in the morning peak at least, the road is a nightmare, sometimes it can take up to 30 mins just to get from the intersection of Ash St and Gt North Rd to the motorway, oddly closer you get to the motorway the better the flow becomes. Of course there lots of buses that use this route and they get stuck in the traffic as well. Perhaps that part could be put into a bus lane and have T2/3 on it as well as a compromise.
T2 lane along Waterview straight would be really interesting actually. Could have some significant congestion relief benefits.
I think it would quite useful, there does seem to be a high number of cars with more than one occupant in them especially now that the motorway onramp has the T2 lane on it. The biggest issue would be how to deal with it once it got to the motorway, there would be a lot of cars wanting to move through the lane to get on the motorway which could cause issues, these could of course be lessened by priority lights etc.
There is to be some road widening of Great North Road between the interchange and the first set of traffic lights, as part of the Waterview Connection works. My understanding is that a bus lane is likely along that stretch. Further back towards Blockhouse Bay Road I don’t think things would be so problematic with lane-changes – it’d mainly just be finding ways to more efficiently use what are two incredibly busy lanes of traffic.
It’s kind of sad that you have to make a special service to do what a proper bus system should do, provide reliable transport at a reasonable frequency.
The aim should be for the entire system to be b-lines, we should accept nothing less
Is this the case? I surely hope so
My Dom Rd buses have definitely been fuller since the introduction of the b line…
Anyone got a list of patronage on individual bus routes?
Between that and the timetabled service frequency it should be easy to work out where to next.
The corridor through Main Highway, Ellerslie, up to Symonds St/Central Connector would be my next choice. Bus frequencies at peak are down around 5-10 minutes, but during the day and at weekends it can be a bit hit-and-miss. On Main Highway during weekdays it can be 20 minutes or more between scheduled services, and that’s with all H&E and all 5xx NZBus routes converging through Ellerslie village. A little juggling of route scheduling would allow for the 15-minutes-or-better frequency with ease, and provide benefit to the transport-options-starved burghers of the south-eastern suburbs.
The corridor would also benefit from more buses, as many’s the time (especially when trying to board city-bound at Market Rd/GSR) that I’ve had to watch a stream of buses blaze past because they’ve got a full standing load.
Thinking long term I would b-line a route that approximates the future Avondale-Southdown railway line, at least the section from Onehunga to the west, with the aim of changing land use and building up demand along the corridor. This would mean sending your route 3 to Avondale instead. I understand patronage on the current 008/009 are growing – in my view the lack of integrated ticketing is a key factor preventing the route performing at its full potential.
If reliability is a goal I would also avoid the Royal Oak roundabout by sending the bus along Trafalgar Street, up Pah Road and then onto Mt Albert Road. If people need to go to Royal Oak they can easily change at Onehunga.
Also a small point on your route 4 – I don’t believe there is a northern entrance to SH20 on Queenstown Rd/Pah Road – only south.
This post is bang on, and is in line with something we have just posted at City Vision about rail – http://cityvision.org.nz/news_stories/227.
Fundamentally, passengers must have a certain level of confidence that they can rely on the service to just turn up, before they will decisively shift to public transport. I’m a regular user of the 267 on Dom Rd, and you don’t need to check timetables, or text ahead, you just turn up and you know that a bus will be along relatively shortly.
You are right that the B-Line idea is essentially a marketing gimmick, but it has given people that confidence. If the service can be as regular, and promoted as such on other key lines, there is no reason that the results shouldn’t be the same.