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Auckland's new $300 million Northern Busway is attracting international interest, notably among corporations wanting to use it as a backdrop for advertisements.
Although the 7km busway itself is being kept out of bounds, North Shore City Council has agreed to make its associated Albany park-and-ride bus station available for a fee at quiet times to local and overseas film crews.
Busway stations manager Anthony Blom confirmed the latest approach was from an international entertainment company which wanted to film the "futuristic-looking" station as the set for its next blockbuster computer animation game.
He would not identify the company, but said it was sending scouts to the station soon to study film angles.
The station had already been used to film a number of advertisements, including one last weekend by a motor company wanting to showcase a new car model in an empty parking area.
Mr Blom said his council, which owns the Albany station and four others further south along the busway, had no objections to allowing access to it in return for nominal application fees and promises by advertisers to accept liability for any damage.
"We wouldn't want someone driving a new car through the bus station, and if they do that, they are going to have to pay for it," he said.
But he said the council and Transit NZ had no intention at this stage of allowing advertisements to be filmed on the busway itself.
Mr Blom said that although one company had asked to film a fuel-efficient "green" car on the busway, even that was considered an inappropriate use of a facility built to boost public transport.
"We said no, because it was not an appropriate use of the busway," he told the Weekend Herald.
The busway has, meanwhile, been extended 250m south, so that Auckland-bound buses do not have to merge with general motorway traffic until after they pass under the Exmouth St footbridge towards the Onewa Rd interchange. Buses have the run of their own two-lane highway for 6.24km from Constellation Drive to Akoranga, at which point the busway is reduced to one lane for 680m for southbound services only.
That lane will extended by a further 890m next year, to between Onewa Rd and the Harbour Bridge, but northbound buses will have to keep using the Northern Motorway and the Esmonde Rd interchange to reach the busway via the Akoranga station.
