There was so much interesting discussion on my blog post a couple of days ago about how to make Auckland’s bus network operate better in the city centre that I thought it was necessary to do a secondary blog post to discuss some of the issues raised. In particular, there were two matters that probably require a bit of extra thought:
- Where and how to turn around the North Shore services that I propose should go via Wellesley Street to the university.
- Whether North Shore buses should use the Fanshawe/Customs street corridor instead of Wellesley Street.
There was also some discussion about whether there might be sense in having some buses bypass the city centre completely – particularly once the Victoria Park Tunnel project means that spaghetti junction is not quite so clogged up with cars. That’s probably a separate issue to discuss in a future post – as I really don’t know as much as I should about the impacts of the Victoria Park Tunnel project on traffic flows in and around the city centre.
With regards to where the buses should go around the university, I agree we don’t want to stuff Alfred Street up with too many buses as in an ideal world it should be closed off completely an absorbed into the University as a general area of open space. But on the other hand it is a really really handy spot for students to get on and off the bus: being right in the heart of the university. Possibly some routes could go via Alfred Street with others disgorging passengers down on Wellesley Street – it’s something that could be worked out in more detail at a later stage.
In terms of analysing the bigger question, whether North Shore buses should go via Wellesley Street or Fanshawe/Customs Street, one thing that’s probably useful to look at before we go too much further into drawing lines on maps (which I love doing) is to analyse what the current situation is – in particular looking at the morning peak bus flows into the city. This work was kindly compiled as part of NZTA’s analysis of North Shore rail options:
The big flows into the city come from three locations – down Symonds Street (fed by southern buses and isthmus buses), northwards along Albert Street (generally fed by west Auckland buses) and in along Fanshawe Street for North Shore buses. You can see the potential for problems along Albert Street with heavy bus flows in each direction – a particularly severe problem as the bus lanes along Albert Street are very stop-start and generally inadequate in my opinion.
By 2041, even with the CBD Rail Tunnel built, the study showed significant increases in the number of buses entering the CBD – though the impact of the rail tunnel is evident in the reduction of buses from the south (64 current reduced to 50):
Indeed, without the tunnel the result is completely mental.
Along with the Albert Street problem, I see real problems with providing sufficient bus capacity along Customs Street and past Britomart in the future. Especially if we are going to continue to run buses down Symonds Street and Anzac Ave towards Britomart, we’re going to end up in the situation where just about every bus in the city descends on this spot in Lower Queen Street. While that’s handy from an interchange point of view, in terms of its sheer practicality I can see massive problems in concentrating so many buses through that part of the city centre. Sure, we could build something along the lines of the Sturdee Street busway that I proposed a few months ago, but even then I worry we’re concentrating too many bus services in one part of the CBD.
That said, I think there are some smart suggestions that came out of the comments (in particular this one by Stu Donovan). It does make sense to have more through-running buses, as long as we can ensure they remain reliable and median bus lanes (or some other form of very high quality bus priority) would be a good idea along Customs Street and Fanshawe Street. But would it alleviate the need to shift more buses away from the Fanshawe/Customs corridor onto the Wellesley corridor? I don’t necessarily agree. Furthermore, when comparing the two corridors as possible “through-town” options, the Wellesley corridor is both shorter (1.52 km km compared to 2.53 km between the Fanshawe/Halsey intersection and the Symonds/Wellesley intersection) and has fewer signalised intersections. A comparison of the two is shown below:
Of course the Customs Street option has advantages of linking with Britomart and the Ferry terminal, but then in the future the Wellesley corridor will run right past Aotea train station. Furthermore, if Quay Street is ever pedestrianised then that’s going to put a huge amount of extra pressure on Customs Street as the only crosstown route in the northern part of the city centre. And we must think about whether we really do want a massive number of buses clogging up QEII square and its surrounding streets.
In the shorter term though, I think getting most of the North Shore buses out of Albert Street and away from the mess that is Customs Street and some parts of Fanshawe Street (it’s fine between Nelson and Beaumont Streets but gets snarled in the evening peak before that point) will have huge benefits to the efficiency of how buses work in central Auckland. It will require more bus lanes to implement, but Wellesley Street seems like a road that can handle that – as from my experience it never seems to be one of the busier cross-town arterials.
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Hey Josh here’s an idea:
1. Keep the blue line as you have drawn it; but
2. Extend the red line on Upper Symonds Street so that it can head down New North/Dominion/Mt Eden
This kind of blends both options – which may be necessary to deal with the expected bus volumes.
Not a bad idea Stu. If you look at the projected bus numbers that might work quite well.
I don’t get why we have this centralized system, why would everybody want to go to Britomart?
I mean, fine for those that work closely, you get a bus in every direction all the time, but for everyone else its just a pain.
I only know the two busses from the shore that don’t do the Britomart / Albert Street run, the 881 and the 962. There might be others but most do pretty much end in midtown. When you look at the 881, you’ll see that its usually full, even now that they doubled the capacity. So there’s certainly demand for other routes.
If you put out new routes, the people will follow. 😉
Nice lines on a map. I like the simplicity.
1. From a transport point of view Anzac Ave is less congested but there is little incentive from a landuse perspective. So I would terminate the RED route near Britamart (or maybe Parnell). Having it go past Vector would be great. So this would be the Northern Express. By keeping it short we can keep it reliable.
2. I would have the BLUE route go straight as suggested above by Stu. But as he pointed out earlier this week the Blue route has more hills and will be disrupted when the CBD tunnel is built. Its unfortunite that there is no bus onramp near Cook Street, because the Blue route come off at Cook Street, down Sales and onto your route but it can’t go back that way (so ignore that).
3. I would have a GREEN route come along Ponsonby Road to cater for the southeast, and go accross Grafton Bridge towards Newmarket.