KEY POINTS:
About 180 car-parking spaces will be added to a big Auckland bus station which has been bulging at the seams with commuters.
North Shore City Council and the Auckland Regional Transport Authority yesterday confirmed plans to build a 180-space "park and ride" extension to the Albany station, where passengers are about to get more peak-time bus services.
Work on the $750,000 project will start next month, for completion in mid-May, under an agreement for the authority to contribute $411,000 and for the city to cover the balance.
The Albany station opened 15 months ago with free all-day parks for 350 cars to build up patronage before Transit NZ and the council complete the $290 million two-lane Northern Busway by this time next year.
But it did not take long for "full-up" signs to appear many mornings both there and at the Constellation station, which opened at the same time between Albany and the Harbour Bridge.
Although the council reserved enough land for about 1200 parking spaces at Albany, a consent order issued by the Environment Court after opposition from local landowners limited Constellation to just over 400 cars.
That has left long lines of vehicles parked along local streets on some mornings as passenger numbers on the Northern Express buses regularly exceed 50,000 a month.
Patronage settled over summer, but North Shore team leader Anthony Blom said the full-up signs were back at both stations before 9am yesterday and on Monday.
That has not stopped transport authority planners from arranging even more peak-time buses to start on Monday, as returning university students start vying with other commuters for seats or standing room.
Northern Express buses will run every seven or eight minutes towards Auckland between 7am and 8.30am, compared with every 10 minutes until now, and in the reverse direction between 5pm and 6pm.
Waiting times will be even shorter for commuters able to find space on other buses using the stations, such as those from Hibiscus Coast or the East Coast Bays, although it is often a tight squeeze for those trying to get on at Constellation.
But what has been a 15-minute, off-peak frequency will be reduced to every 30 minutes in both directions after 8pm each weekday, and for longer morning and evening periods during weekends.
Even so, Ritchies Transport is having four new buses built to boost its Northern Express fleet to 14, as planners consider providing even more services before the busway and three more stations between Sunnynook and Takapuna open early next year.
Transport authority chief executive Fergus Gammie acknowledged yesterday that the ultimate goal was to encourage more passengers to use feeder buses rather than their cars to reach the stations.
He said the authority was working with operators to have an "integrated" ticket - transferable between feeder and Northern Express services - available in time for the busway opening.
That would begin as a paper ticket, to be replaced by an electronic version about two years later.
