Ask Phoebe: Numbering for city bus routes to be simplified

Photo / NZPA

A friend and I were chatting over coffee recently and watching the traffic roll by. As one, we looked at each other and said, "How do they allocate bus route numbers? How would you know which bus to catch?" Can you help, Phoebe?

Janet McAllister, Mt Eden.

I certainly can, with help from the excellent team at Auckland Transport. The three-digit bus numbering system was introduced in 1974 when the old Auckland Regional Authority took over bus companies in the west, north and south.

To avoid route number duplication and to create a common numbering scheme for all bus routes, a three-digit system was introduced.

The first digit was for the area or corridor - for example, 3 for buses running via Manukau Rd. The second digit specified the route - for example, 34 for Manukau Rd buses to Mangere via Bader Drive and Kingsford.

The final number was the destination - for example, 4 for Old Papatoetoe, 6 for Otara and 7 for Manukau City.

While this system may have seemed perfectly logical to those who designed it, that was often far from the case for customers riding buses.

Auckland Transport is in the throes of a three-year project to redesign (and considerably simplify) an often quite complex bus system, including simplifying routes and numbering.

This is due to be rolled out in South Auckland in early 2015 and elsewhere over the following couple of years in conjunction with the introduction of new bus services.

There is a beacon on a rock off Rangitoto in the Waitemata Harbour called Iliomana Light. It's such an unusual name that I wondered about its history. Can you help? Bill Davidson, Balmoral.

It's actually a misspelling; it should be Iliomama. It was named after the schooner of that name that was wrecked there in the early 1850s, on a passage from Honolulu.

The Waterview Connection is two tunnels - one in each direction, with the borer constructing one, then turning around and constructing the other. Does this mean one direction will be completed and opened before the other? Mike Batten, Auckland.

As much as the NZ Transport Agency wants to deliver some of the benefits of the Waterview Connection project early, there are a number of safety-related reasons why it is not possible to open just one tunnel.

Once Alice - the tunnel-boring machine - finishes her work, the two tunnels have to be linked by 16 connecting passages. These passages will contain the mechanical and electrical systems that provide power to the tunnel lighting and the ventilation, CCTV and safety systems.

The testing and commissioning of all these systems requires that both tunnels be available.

Finishing and fitting out the tunnels also needs to coincide with the work above ground, and the completion of the huge interchange connecting the Northwestern and Southwestern Motorways (SH16 and SH20).