KEY POINTS:
Auckland's public transport agency promises higher-frequency bus services when the $295 million Northern Busway graduates with its full road licence in February, after a trial which began at the weekend.
Although Northern Express buses chugging southbound down the 6.24km busway between Constellation Drive and Esmonde Rd every seven and a half minutes in the morning commuter peak are supplemented by other services, the new two-lane road is looking eerily empty compared with the jammed motorway lanes next to it.
While that in itself will be a powerful marketing tool to persuade more motorists to leave their cars at home and hop on a bus, it will also fuel calls for vehicles with three or more occupants to be allowed on the busway.
That is despite Transit NZ's unwillingness to allow such a move until the Victoria Park motorway tunnel is built by about 2012, as it believes heavy congestion will make it unsafe until then for high-occupancy vehicles to manoeuvre back into mainstream traffic south of the Harbour Bridge.
The Auckland Regional Transport Authority is meanwhile preparing to increase Northern Express services, which ply the Albany-Britomart main-trunk route via five bus stations, to every five minutes at peak periods and 10 minutes at other times.
With the addition of other buses feeding into the system from various North Shore suburbs or the Hibiscus Coast, that will boost vehicle movements to 70 an hour from February 3, when they will be allowed to start collecting and dropping passengers at all five stations along a fully functioning busway.
During the trial, which will not extend to northbound bus services until next month, buses are unable to stop between Constellation Drive and central Auckland.
Ritchie Transport director Andrew Ritchie said his company had ordered four more elongated buses for the extension of its Northern Express services, which it runs under contract to the transport authority.
Although the busway is designed to carry up to 250 buses an hour by 2016, and could theoretically accommodate an even higher number of high-occupancy vehicles, Mr Ritchie said it would be a great shame if they were allowed into the system.
"A big thing we have got to consider is people's safety around the bus stations, if we have HOVs [high-occupancy vehicles] and buses both using them."
Asked about likely pressure from frustrated motorists eyeing the comparatively empty tarmac from the other side of the motorway barriers, he said: "They can always buy a bus ticket."
