Enabling a Great Bus Service
With the new Te Waihorotiu Station opening on Wellesley St and Victoria St this year, a lot of effort has gone into making sure that they connect easily with the bus service, while also ensuring there is space for more pedestrians, scooters and cyclists flowing through the area. Victoria St linear park is well on its way to completion, the cycleways are linking up, and space needs also to be made for buses.
This takes some thought. Wellesley St is not that wide. The central city is the most congested part of Waitemata (see map below) and Te Waihorotiu is tipped to become the busiest train station in the country.
For buses to meet expectations of frequency and reliability they need priority in some areas. Designated for that purpose are a handful of routes North to South (Albert St and Symonds St) and West to East (Wellesley St and Fanshawe-Custom St-Beach Road) with 24/7 bus lanes in some sections.
However, Wellesley St around the Civic theatre is a highly visited destination. It will have many buses coming through it, but a lot of drivers will want to drop off in the area too. Do nothing and the traffic will split between Wellesley and Mayoral and Wakefield - while this might make it marginally faster for some cars (with small passenger numbers), this has a high chance of mucking up bus reliability (with large passenger numbers).
This has likely happened in the past because there is already a bus filter by the central library restricting East to West movement from Mayoral Drive to Queen St 24/7. Now it is proposed to install a bus filter from West to East between Eliott and Queen St (with the idea that most cars continue South on Hobson St and access the city centre via Mayoral Drive (on which is the entrance to the Civic carpark). If general traffic use the route they would be hit by a hefty fine (as they have been on Queen St).
The strategy is based on Access4All - enable all vehicular traffic access to where they need to go (or close to it), but discourage the city centre being used as a through route. This is a good strategy. However, it is up to AT to consider how they make it work. They could:
A: look at signage, road paint and traffic design to make it as obvious as it is outside the Central library that the route is BUS ONLY and apply 24/7 so few people are caught out.
B: use obscure language (what does AVO even mean?) and fines to punish people into compliant behaviour (and/or avoid visiting the city from now on).
C: incorporate a watered down A with B, but then add different rules for different times of day even though the road is likely to be busier in the evening, to reduce effectiveness and increase confusion - which will be exacerbated when further changes are made (CURRENT PREFERRED OPTION)
For those trying to attract people to the city centre I can understand why there has been frustration with fines and inadequate signage. It is also imperative the bus system works. The local board is urging AT to chose Option A.