Viewpoint – Transport gains for Coast

It’s maybe still not quite the case of ‘all good things coming to those who wait’, but 2016 is at least going to see a few good things happening with transport locally.The development of the next stage of the Hibiscus Coast busway will occur later this year. It’ll be similar to Albany offering customer facilities such as sheltered waiting areas, bathroom facilities, emergency help points, CC TV and possibly a small retail offering. The parking capacity will increase to 500 spaces.

The new frequent service Hibiscus Coast bus network is already up and running, the first in fact to be rolled out in Auckland, several years ahead of everyone else.

The other project occurring, also a first, is the Whangaparaoa Road ‘dynamic laning’ trial. This will see the latest LED lighting technology employed to improve the morning and evening peaks from Red Beach lights to the Hibiscus Coast Highway. It’ll provide three lanes at peak times and outside these peak hours will revert to normal operation.
There’ll be no disruptive widening work, instead utilising the existing space within the road corridor.

At Gulf Harbour a new ferry contract will soon be put out to tender. It will result in a significant increase in the number of daily sailings, as well as improvements to boats. This service is already a huge success. It will lift to another level when daily sailings match Pine Harbour in Beachlands (15 return sailings to Auckland per day).

The benefit to motorists from public transport improvements is that cars are taken off local roads. This is already occurring with latest AT traffic counts showing traffic numbers on the Coast remaining virtually static over the last three years. Possibly because of the worsening tail on the Northern Motorway, people are also leaving earlier, thereby spreading out peak time departures (which is just as well as AT traffic modelling shows that despite planned improvements, motorway congestion right across Auckland will not improve as the population increases and feeds into the same constrained motorway corridors).

There’s even progress of a sort on Penlink. It’s firmly entrenched in all future planning documents (albeit too far out).

AT spent $1.5 million this year redesignating the route to four lanes (land already purchased), its potential connection to a future extended Northern Busway now also fully acknowledged. As always though it’s a question of who’ll foot the bill, currently estimated to be $400 million. AT are in discussions with developers and are for the first time actively promoting a robust public-private partnership process. As happened with the construction of the developer funded Wainui motorway ramps earlier this year, projects can progress far quicker when there’s a timing incentive to the private sector.The reality is that we urgently need all the transport improvements referred to above. Auckland Council is significantly constrained financially so it’s vital to grab what’s on offer for the ‘here and now’. In so doing the irony is that the Coast, once a far flung outpost of the region, will actually end up having more transport options than most other parts of the Super City.