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A letter from Auckland Transport to Auckland Council gives a hint of where the next bus area reviews may be.
Mark Lambert, manager of public transport operations, says that a priority for bus service reviews will be in the Great North/ New North Rd and Great South Rd corridors.
This, he says, to ensure that buses no longer run in parallel with trains from the outer ends of the network to the central city.
This is part of the three year implementation of the ministry of transport programme called PTOM (Public transport operating model) which is about delivering a robust delivery of bus and ferry services in discussions between local authorities and the bus operators.
Mr Lambert says in the last year Auckland Transport has surveyed passengers in those corridors to confirm there is no longer the need for buses to travel all the way to Swanson and papakura to the central city.
“However bus services will be needed along these roads but they will be reconfigured to provide for local journeys which can not be made by train.”
An example would be New North Rd services would be redesigned to detour via St Lukes to serve the shopping centre and high density residential developments.
Papakura bus services would run to and from Manukau only to provide for local journeys.
“While we do not necessarily see these changes as saving overall resources in terms of buses, bus kilometres, we do expect those resources to be used more effectively by providing shorter more reliable and more frequent bus routes which integrate better within the RTN network for longer journeys and which will result in a more ‘legible’ network which will easier to promote to potential users in the future.”
After the LINK changes what next?
The letter says that bus will continue to be the main provider of public transport and will receive greater focus as HOP and PTOM create greater opportunities and the three year PTNP programme is implemented.
“However at present bus reviews will be constrained by new resource and funding.”
5 Comments
Sounds promising.
They are also constrained by the trains being increasingly at capacity, and this not changing until 2014. They will have to be careful not to nicely integrate the services as feeders, and then realise the system they are feeding can’t take it yet.
they can just have the 085 to Swanson and not the 135
Its great this is starting to happen. HOP really can’t come fast enough to allow more of these changes to be implemented.
I am very optomistic about this
it may have a few teething problems to start but it is a great start to using all of transport modes and intergrating them