North Shore Busway Fails to Connect

My presentation to the Integrated Transport Planning Conference in Kuala Lumpur focussed on the mistakes that Auckland made in designing and building the North Shore Busway. These design failings will affect its success for some considerable time. This slide shows the alignment of the busway alongside State Highway One. The busway lies within the SH1 designation. This reflects the fact that Transit (as it then was) was keen to reduce congestion on the Harbour Bridge approaches. However North Shore City Council dozed quietly on each side of this corridor. I know because I was Chair of the Busway Corridor Steering Committee at the time, trying for better integration. Trying so hard in fact that Mayor George Wood thought I was "trying to kill the busway..."...

In this slide you can see the location of North Shore's main town centres, in relation to the busway corridor. These include: Devonport, Takapuna, Milford, Highbury, Glenfield, Mairangi Bay etc...

This map shows North Shore's main employment centres: Wairau valley, Takapuna, Rosedale Industrial Estate...

And here you can see North Shore's main sports recreation locations: Onewa Netball courts, North Shore Event Centre (go the Breakers), Rosedale Hockey, Glenfield Leisure Centre, Millenium Institute, Albany Tennis....

And here are the schools and universities. There are two that are slap bang on the Busway: Westlake Girls High School and the North Shore campus of Massey University. But just as two swallows don't make a summer - two integrated destinations don't make a Busway successful. You get the picture. The Busway does not CONNECT into the North Shore's main destinations. And so it cannot be expected to shape the development of those destinations and their future land uses - simply because the private motor vehicle remains the most convenient way to access those destinations.

I am indebted to my good friend and colleague Alan Hoffman (when he was with Mission Group) for this and the next slide, which show very well the link between public transport system design and land use development patterns. This one is the "weak strategy" which has bedevilled Auckland planning for decades - and which the current limited implementation of the busway threatens to perpetuate.

And this one illustrates a strong strategy - where a determined planning effort is made to ensure that public transport system design WILL shape future land use and travel patterns. The present Northshore Busway project can shift from being a Weak influence to being a Strong influence on land use, if and when it becomes well connected to North Shore's major destinations. Until then all it will be is an inter-regional passenger transport link which simply perpetuates Auckland's bad habits of living 20 km plus from your place of work, and hoping transport services will get you there and back reliably and quickly.

This image shows an artists conception of how the Akoranga Busway Station would look. Classic architect thinking. You can see from this image that the greatest interest was focussed on the building itself. Completely separate and not integrated with the building's relationship with surrounding land uses....

... so it is no surprise that the resulting station is so far from land uses that might attract patronage, and might make the busway a useful piece of transport infrastructure in providing access to those activities. The Akoranga station's location was justified by some as providing access to Massey University - by means of the walkway above State Highway One. But it is very rare to see anyone using that walkway. This station alone cost $15 million. Meanwhile Takapuna town centre struggles to provide a tenth of this commuter amenity. Those who think that North Shore's public transport problem will be magically resolved by building rail to the North Shore and along the busway corridor are deluded. Until the North Shore busway is properly interconnected - by reliable and frequent bus services - with North Shore's existing land uses, it will continue to be a marginally useful service operating well below its design capacity of 11,000 passengers/hour on the busway spine itself.