Planning & building a busway in Auckland’s public transport vacuum
Session 2

Auckland Regions’s passenger transport patronage has been in free fall for decades. It has bottomed and is now on the increase. To avoid or defer constructing a second harbour crossing between North Shore City and Auckland City a dedicated busway alongside the existing state highway is planned. The first sod for this $200,000,000 project was turned by the Minister of Transport in March 2003.

The presentation and paper will describe the project and contain detailed images of the route and corridor design, and design drawings of the different busway station buildings and platforms. Linkages with surrounding communities and other transport modes including general traffic, park and ride facilities, feeder buses, cars (including HOVs which can use the busway), cyclists and pedestrians will be illustrated.

The presentation will emphasise local and regional governance, community and environmental challenges that are being addressed as the project proceeds.

For example the busway is aligned with a state highway which bisects and divides North Shore City communities. This presents a landuse and transport corridor challenge for a fast growing city with only rudimentary public transport systems. There is a need to integrate city arterials and local bus priority measures with and across the busway to provide intracity public transport services, while recognising a proportion of the city’s commuter workforce travels to Auckland city for employment.

The Busway project is one of four major corridor projects being undertaken simultaneously across the Auckland Region – two of the others are based on heavy rail – and this presents further transport service integration and interconnection challenges which are being addressed through evolving governance structures.