Auckland Transit by Alan Hoffman

These slides were shared with me by Alan Hoffman of Mission Group, USA, at a conference on public transport held in Sydney in 2002. I was there to talk about the design of the Northern Busway, as Chair of North Shore City Council's Works and Environment Ctte. Alan's presentation is as relevant to Auckland's situation today as it was then. He begins with the age old questions which have been asked repeatedly in Auckland....

He notes the classic "is it about fare prices or is it about time saving" question. We have the same question in Auckland. We have the same outcome as US - especially when it comes to bus transit that's not on the busway. It's generally regarded as a poor service for people on low incomes.

He makes simple points about market research which echo much of what has been found in Auckland. We are easily able to capture the patronage of the proportion of Aucklanders who "prefer to use public transport". The trick is the next tranche. What needs to happen for them to take public transport?

The big thing is time saving. He makes the huge point that "you have to want to save their trip times". That means the service provider has to be committed to saving travel times by building public transport services that are faster, and more reliable, than travelling by car. And the "how" is by increasing the number of direct, express services. We have some of these in the Northern Busway. We need more in other parts of the bus network.


This slide is a development of the same point. It is about making public transport indispensable. But that's not necessarily for absolutely everybody in Auckland. It is built up by targeting areas and targeting geographies.


This slide emphasises the need for connectivity. That was a key factor in my approach to straightening Auckland bus routes.  

These next two slides reflect Auckland's current land use and public transport planning strategy....

.... and emphasise the goal of making a network that is useful...

I was lucky to go with the Parliamentary Commissioner for Environment's study trip to Curitiba almost 10 years ago. It is an extraordinary exemplar, and one which is cited by Alan in this slide. You can read here what Curitiba's goal was - an unattainable goal a bit like Auckland's sometimes appears to be. So Curitiba responded by doing what it could. Step by step. Auckland needs to do the same. Existing radial bus services need to be reorganised into a high frequency network which connects Auckland's towns, and cross-town orbital or direct connections can follow.

Straighten Auckland Bus Services

This is a map of Auckland's tram routes when it had tram routes. These routes shaped Auckland's development for many years. The car and motorways have shaped Auckland since. We do have a rudimentary public transport system, primarily based around a cluster of bus services that have been developed over time. Many cities have developed this way. Many cities have rationalised and developed their bus services. Auckland planners are considering what's best for the future of Auckland's bus services. I've spent some time looking at it....


This map (which you can expand by clicking) is built up from the bus maps provided by Auckland Transport. Apart from the Northern Busway - and even including it - you can see that each bus service (which has a unique number) is represented by a line on the map. Thus the more services that run along a corridor, the thicker the corridor, made up of a rainbow of different services. This is one of the reasons why Auckland's bus services are not intuitive, and are difficult to understand for new users and tourists alike.

This map shows the approximate geographic areas of responsibility of the different bus operators which contract to Auckland Transport to provide subsidised bus services. The fact that there are a range of different operators, each with contracts which are a form of property right, presents a challenge to those seeking to rationalise bus services. Interestingly, when I visited Curitiba with a study group we learned that there had been hundreds of bus operators, and that these were rationalised to less than a dozen. Key in that restructure was the idea that bus services should be in the form of a network, and that buses did not stop in the city centre, instead they went through the city centre, allowing passengers to change there etc. This experience was fundamental to my understanding of what = a rational bus system.


This map is my arterial simplification of the Auckland Transport bus map listed above. Other factors that have been taken account of in this rough map - which essentially shows the roads that have the most different bus services running along them - includes that the routes should not directly compete with rail services, and also that they should echo the historic tramline layout. So this map is a bus network map.


This map is a close up of the map above. It shows the main arteries of the bus network. These arteries could contain end-to-end high frequency services by rationalising the bus services that run along those corridors. For example, the Northern Busway service - run by Ritchies - should not terminate in Auckland CBD, it should run through the CBD and along one of the other arteries (eg to the airport, to Howick, or Flatbush). This would require a shared contract between the operators who currently provide services on just one of these arteries. I am sure that incentives could be found to make this a worthwhile development for operators - without throwing the baby out with the bathwater.


And then Auckland could have a high frequency public transport bus system that was a genuine network. An arterial bus network. Without complexity. Not everybody would benefit in this rationalisation, but it would deliver a network system capable of considerable expansion, and which would be far more reliable - provided the inidividual arterties were properly protected from congestion, and freed up for buses.