19 February 2015

Big increase in bus services north and east

Auckland commuters will have an extra 33,000 seats and 805 new weekday services each week, from Monday 23 February, Auckland Transport (AT) has announced.

The North Shore is the main beneficiary with Birkenhead Transport adding 776 extra week day trips per week, to bus services running to and along Onewa Rd. That’s an extra 4,500 extra seats every day mostly on services between Beach Haven or Glenfield and the city.

This means that on weekdays there will be another bus along on Onewa Road every eight minutes between 7am and 7pm. New weekend services will be added later.

Meanwhile AT is introducing a brand new service in east Auckland, with a loop service between Stonefields and Glen Innes Station. This new service, operated by Howick and Eastern Buses, will run every 20 minutes between 6am and 7pm, giving 39 services a day and more than 4,00 seats a week, on the loop that starts and finishes at Glen Innes station.

The majority of the North Shore services will be between Beach Haven (43) and Glenfield (58) and Britomart. A further 18 will run between Highbury and Newmarket via Ponsonby Road, Karangahape Road and the Hospital. Eight connect Bach Haven and Auckland University with a further two between Chatsworth and the University. Another 13 connect Beach Haven and Takapuna.

While this is a total of 142 new services, the net gain of is 138 as four other services have been deleted.

This very significant expansion of capacity is another major step in Auckland Transport’s commitment to create fast, high-frequency, services in key areas of the city. The aim is to encourage Aucklanders to leave their cars at home and commute by bus, rail and ferry, and continually rising patronage figures across the city show that these initiatives are meeting with ever-increasing success.

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