North Shore New Bus Network to be confirmed

In the middle of last year, Auckland Transport consulted on the new bus network for the North Shore. Now in a report to the open session of the AT board meeting today is an item with the outcome of the consultation (9.9MB).

At a high level:

• AT had a massive response with over 3,100 responses which is huge considering the South and West Auckland consultations each only had around 1,000 responses.
• In response to the question “Overall to what extent do you support or oppose the North Shore New Network?” 54% were in support and 34% opposed.
• As a result of the feedback they’ve made changes to 21 of the 40 routes that were proposed in the consultation and have added two new routes although one route was removed. In addition 15 routes have had changes to their frequency or hours of operation.

Here’s what the final bus routes on the Shore will look like

As a comparison here’s what the route maps currently look like. It’s a much busier map which largely because there are a lot of infrequent services that wind their way through the suburbs.

One of the key principles of the new network is to make use of transfers to get better use out of buses so that rather than running multiple buses infrequently in all directions, buses run to fewer locations but more frequently with transfers to extend the reach of PT routes.

Of course competing with this, many people want buses to travel express from their local stop to their destination. As such AT received a number of pieces of feedback to retain or create express services. Positively it appears they’ve resisted the urge to do this as it would likely have both increased costs and AT say in their report that it would have put even more buses on already busy city streets. With the exception of the Western North Shore and a few other locations, most services will feed into a busway station – like buses will do with trains in the South and the West. To ensure there is adequate space for people transferring from feeder buses in the mornings, AT say some busway buses will start at Constellation or other intermediate stations.

The busway itself will get a boost with multiple Northern Express (NEX) routes so services to the city will be even more frequent than they are now – although different services from across the Shore to the city will use different routes. This is shown below but essentially the NEX 1 and the frequent services from Onewa Rd will go to lower Albert St like they’ve started doing since the change for the CRL works. The NEX 2 (former 881) and other buses from the shore will loop through the middle of town while a few services like the NEX 3 will go via Ponsonby and K Rd to Newmarket however these will only operate on weekdays. A small note says that whether they go via Ponsonby Rd or not will depend on bus priority investigations.

AT say that to implement the new network they’ll need 100-150 new or relocated bus stops and likely some other minor infrastructure too such as bus layover facilities, and bus priority.

It’s hard to say just what impact the new network will have but AT estimate the should achieve about a 15% increase in bus use during the morning peak within 12-18 months of implementation which would be the equivalent to about 1,000 cars.

But it will still be some time away before these changes take place. AT say the procurement for the North Shore is likely to happen at the end of this year with the new network rolled out in early 2018. The network that’s is to be approved will result in around a 20% increase in service kilometres being run and about a 15% increase in the number of hours they run for compared to what currently exists. AT managed to save $3 million a year on the South Auckland contracts so I imagine they’ll be needing the same levels of savings from buses on the Shore to help pay for that.

Lastly here is a view of the new route map showing the changes that were made, what do you think about them?

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