The Northern Busway is a physically separated busway with dedicated park & ride facilities along State Highway 1

State Highway 1 (New Zealand)

State Highway 1 is the longest and most significant road in the New Zealand roading network, running the length of both main islands. It appears on road maps as SH 1 and on road signs as a white number 1 on a red shield, but it has the official designations SH 1N in the North Island, SH 1S in the...

 in the north of Auckland

Auckland

The Auckland metropolitan area , in the North Island of New Zealand, is the largest and most populous urban area in the country with residents, percent of the country's population. Auckland also has the largest Polynesian population of any city in the world...

, New Zealand, linking the North Shore with Auckland CBD

Auckland CBD

The Auckland CBD is the geographical and economic heart of the Auckland metropolitan area. Bounded by several major motorways and by the harbour coastline in the north, it is surrounded further out by mostly suburban areas...

. It reduces travel times for from around one hour by car during peak hours

Rush hour

A rush hour or peak hour is a part of the day during which traffic congestion on roads and crowding on public transport is at its highest. Normally, this happens twice a day—once in the morning and once in the evening, the times during when the most people commute...

 to about half an hour by bus, and within the North Shore, where it is to become the spine of an ambitious bus-based public transport

Public transport

Public transport is a shared passenger transportation service which is available for use by the general public, as distinct from modes such as taxicab, car pooling or hired buses which are not shared by strangers without private arrangement.Public transport modes include buses, trolleybuses, trams...

 system.

Construction

The project was designed and consulted on by Mario Madayag Architecture, Jasmax, Beca Group

Beca Group

' is one of the largest employee-owned engineering and related consultancy services companies in the Asia-Pacific. While it is headquartered in Auckland, New Zealand, Beca operates from three main hubs: Australia, New Zealand and Singapore. Beca has over 2,400 employees in total, many of them...

, Opus and Connell Wagner, while Fletcher Construction

Fletcher Construction

Fletcher Construction Limited is a leading New Zealand construction company. It is owned by Fletcher Building Limited and has three main divisions:*Building and interiors *South Pacific...

 built the busway. Akoranga, Smales Farm, and Sunnynook stations were built by NZ Strong Construction.

Difficulties encountered included the close-by residential areas, the predominantly soft ground, and environmental efforts to protect dotterel breeding grounds. The construction of the busway employed around 300 people at its peak, with around a million man-hours being invested, including shifts during 512 nights.

Operation

The busway was officially opened in February 2008 after several years of construction, though the two northernmost stations had been operating since December 2005 using the normal Northern Motorway lanes. It was credited with having reduced peak traffic on the Northern Motorway by around 500 cars each rush hour one month after the opening, and about 39% of passengers on the 'Northern Express' bus service had never used public transport before. The busway was initially used by 70 buses per hour during peak time, which includes both existing and new services like the 'Northern Express'.

With its completion, the busway has started to raise interest both amongst technical experts as well as other groups. There have been advertisements filmed at the bus stations, and requests to allow filming of car commercials on the busway (a request denied as being inappropriate for a public transport facility) and interest from overseas movie location scouts wanting to use the 'futuristic' stations as backdrops.

In 2008 the busway received the 'Shell Bitumen Excellence Award for a Major Roading Project' and the 'Roading New Zealand Supreme Award'. In June 2009, it received the Ingenium 'Excellence Award' (in the category for projects above NZ$2 million construction cost).

In June 2010, the busway carried its 5-millionth passenger. The patronage figures have kept rising, and as of 2010, the busway is estimated to remove the equivalent of about 5,100 cars in the morning peak from the route, with 80 buses per hour during the peak times.

By mid 2011, frequencies of Northern Express buses had risen to one every three minutes during the morning peak hour, five minutes during the 'shoulder peak' hours.

Funding

The busway became fully operational in 2009 (with some final sections being completed with little publicity) for a cost of around NZ$290–294 million: $210 million for the busway and $84 million for the stations. The project was funded by Transit New Zealand

Transit New Zealand

Transit New Zealand was, from 1989 to 2008, the New Zealand Crown entity responsible for operating and planning the New Zealand State Highway network...

, ARTA and the Auckland City Council

Auckland City Council

Auckland City Council was the local government authority representing Auckland City, New Zealand, and was amalgamated into the Auckland Council on 1 November 2010. It was an elected body representing the 404,658 residents of the city...

 and North Shore City Councils.

Busway

The busway extends on two lanes for 6.2 km running parallel with the motorway from Constellation Drive, Albany

Albany, New Zealand

Albany is a northern suburb of Auckland, one of the several cities in northern New Zealand. The name derives from Alba and its Latinisation. It is located to the north of the Waitemata Harbour, 15 kilometres northwest of the Auckland city centre. The suburb is in the Albany ward, one of the...

 to Akoranga bus station, from where a one-way southbound bus lane extends a further 2.5 km to the Harbour Bridge

Auckland Harbour Bridge

The Auckland Harbour Bridge is an eight-lane box truss motorway bridge over the Waitemata Harbour, joining St Marys Bay in Auckland with Northcote in North Shore City, New Zealand. The bridge is part of State Highway 1 and the Auckland Northern Motorway...

Its use is limited to buses of 25+ seat capacity, emergency and maintenance vehicles. The busway has been designed for possible use by car pools and for potential conversion to light rail

Light rail

Light rail or light rail transit is a form of urban rail public transportation that generally has a lower capacity and lower speed than heavy rail and metro systems, but higher capacity and higher speed than traditional street-running tram systems...

.

Bus stations

The busway includes five dedicated stations, some with extensive park & ride car parks. Feeder bus services serve the stations, allowing transfer or continuing on the busway.

The stations are (south to north):

• Akoranga Busway Station
  Akoranga Busway Station
  Akoranga Station is a bus station in Northcote, New Zealand, part of the Auckland Northern Busway. It is adjacent to the Akoranga Campus of the Auckland University of Technology and linked to it by a footbridge over the Northern Motorway...
  
  
• Smales Farm Busway Station
  Smales Farm Busway Station
  Smales Farm Station is a bus station in Westlake, New Zealand, part of the Auckland Northern Busway. It is adjacent to the Smales Farm Office Park which houses Sovereign & Telstra Clear as well as others....
  
  
• Sunnynook Busway Station
  Sunnynook Busway Station
  Sunnynook Busway Station is a bus station in Sunnynook, New Zealand, part of the Auckland Northern Busway. Sunnynook is the smallest station on the Northern Busway....
  
  
• Constellation Drive Park & Ride
• Albany Park & Ride

All stations provide shelter and cycle parking and were designed with public safety in mind, such as with glass walls, low planting, night lighting and CCTV

Closed-circuit television

Closed-circuit television is the use of video cameras to transmit a signal to a specific place, on a limited set of monitors....

 to enhance security.

Other structures

Major related structures are the new Esmonde Interchange (with the works also including large-scale improvements for other traffic modes), and the Tristram Avenue Viaduct, which crosses the often congested Tristram Avenue via grade separation

Grade separation

Grade separation is the method of aligning a junction of two or more transport axes at different heights so that they will not disrupt the traffic flow on other transit routes when they cross each other. The composition of such transport axes does not have to be uniform; it can consist of a...

. The viaduct has 12 spans of 30 m each, with the foundation piles

Deep foundation

A deep foundation is a type of foundation distinguished from shallow foundations by the depth they are embedded into the ground. There are many reasons a geotechnical engineer would recommend a deep foundation over a shallow foundation, but some of the common reasons are very large design loads, a...

 being 1.5 m thick.

Future plans

Future plans for the facility include the suggestion of extending rail across the Waitemata Harbour

Waitemata Harbour

The quite famous Waitemata Harbour is the main access by sea to Auckland, New Zealand. For this reason it is often referred to as Auckland Harbour, despite the fact that it is only one of two harbours surrounding the city, and is crossed by the Auckland Harbour Bridge. The Waitemata forms the north...

 to the North Shore, via either a second bridge or a tunnel

Second Harbour Crossing

Second Harbour Crossing is the name given to the proposed second transport link over the Waitemata Harbour in Auckland, New Zealand. The second link would supplement the Auckland Harbour Bridge which is nearly at capacity and also provide more redundancy and added public transport linkages between...

, as the busway design paramaters allow for later conversion to light rail

Light rail

Light rail or light rail transit is a form of urban rail public transportation that generally has a lower capacity and lower speed than heavy rail and metro systems, but higher capacity and higher speed than traditional street-running tram systems...

 (but not, with the current design, to heavy rail).

An extension towards Orewa

Orewa

Orewa, a town in New Zealand's North Island lies on the Hibiscus Coast, just north of the base of the Whangaparaoa Peninsula and 40 kilometres north of central Auckland. Orewa's population was 7,326 in the 2006 Census, an increase of 1,692 from 2001. It is a popular holiday destination...

 in the north is being debated for the long-term future. It was originally expected to cost around NZ$500 million, although the success of the scheme has now sparked potentially more extensive schemes for between NZ$700 million and NZ$1.2 billion for an extension to at least Silverdale

Silverdale, Auckland

Silverdale is a village approximately 30km north of Auckland in the North Island of New Zealand. It is located on the north bank of the Weiti River and lies to the west of the Whangaparaoa Peninsula...

, with up to five tunnels and seven bridges, including a motorway flyover between Constellation Drive and Albany stations. New stations are proposed at Rosedale, Redvale and Silverdale.

See also

• Public transport in Auckland
  Public transport in Auckland
  Public transport in Auckland, the largest metropolitan area of New Zealand, consists of three modes – bus, train and ferry. Services are provided under the "MAXX" brand by private transport providers, coordinated by Auckland Transport, the council controlled organisation that replaced the Auckland...
  
  
• Ritchies Coachlines
  Ritchies Coachlines
  Ritchies Transport Holdings Ltd was established in 1972 and describes itself on its website as "the largest privately owned bus and coach transport operator in New Zealand" with a fleet of "over 600" vehicles spread across depots nationwide....
  
  , transport operator as of 2007

External links

• Northern Busway (official project website - archived version)
• SH1 Northern Busway (NZTA Official Project Page)