Push to let cars with passengers drive along Shore's busway

Cars may get to use the Northern Busway if carrying more then one or two people. Photo / Brett Phibbs

Debate about allowing cars carrying more than one or two people to use Auckland's Northern Busway is stirring again, now the Victoria Park motorway tunnel is nearly complete.

The Transport Agency opposed opening the busway to "high occupancy vehicles" until more motorway space was available through the Victoria Park bottleneck, because of problems foreseen with southbound traffic merging back into general lanes.

But it says it will be prepared to consider letting them into what is now a buses-only highway north of the harbour bridge from Constellation Drive once all three lanes of the new tunnel are available to northbound traffic early next year.

That will enable southbound vehicles to fan out across all four lanes of the Victoria Park flyover, hopefully easing congestion back across the bridge to Takapuna.

The agency's highways regional manager, Tommy Parker, denies it wants to continue keeping cars out of the busway, as suggested by an Auckland Council staff report.

But he said any such decision on that would be up to Auckland Transport, a council-controlled organisation, as the busway operator.

An Auckland Transport review of policy controlling bus and high occupancy vehicle lanes did not include the busway, but the organisation has agreed to investigate its future use by the end of this year.

It will also weigh up calls by local boards for bus lanes on two important feeder routes to the Northern Motorway, Esmonde Rd in Takapuna and the Onewa Rd interchange in Northcote, to be opened to high occupancy vehicles.

The Kaipatiki Local Board wants Auckland Transport and the Transport Agency to look at extending its existing high occupancy lane down Onewa Rd to the interchange bridge, because of problems with vehicles having to switch to the right hand lane.

And the Devonport-Takapuna Local Board wants an investigation into allowing cars with passengers into the Esmonde Rd bus lane, to alleviate traffic congestion back to Lake Rd.

That follows a survey by navigation equipment supplier Tom Tom, which put Takapuna ahead of all other Auckland suburbs in term of delays in the morning traffic peak in proportion to their distances from the city centre.

The average morning car trip from Takapuna took 28 minutes, compared with 10 minutes in free-flowing traffic.

But Devonport-Takapuna board member and veteran bus campaigner Jan O'Connor has strongly opposed her board's resolution, telling Auckland Council's transport committee that letting cars into the Esmonde Rd lane would cause unacceptable delays for bus users.

That would leave buses waiting behind high occupancy cars trying to merge with motorway traffic at the end of the lane.

"Why should a bus carrying 55 people be sitting behind one car while it tries to make room?" she asked the committee.

She said she had canvassed 70 people waiting for buses on Esmonde Rd, who shared her concern.

"They don't want HOVs (high occupancy vehicles) in their face. What they want is more buses.

"Are we for public transport or not, or do we want to let cars run our city?"

But committee member George Wood, who was mayor of the former North Shore City when the $300 million busway was built, said planning commissioners who approved a designation for it did so on the condition that high occupancy vehicles could use it.

He said a special tunnel had been built at the Constellation Drive bus station to let cars join the busway.