KEY POINTS:
Transit NZ will give car-pooling a modest push by allowing vehicles with more than one occupant on to priority lanes for trucks and buses on some Auckland motorway ramps on which all other traffic will be controlled by traffic signals.
The agency has been criticised by Auckland City Council transport chairman Richard Simpson for not doing more to encourage car-pooling along motorways.
Although Transit intends exempting buses from tolls on the western ring route, it has ruled out doing so for taxis and other high-occupancy vehicles, saying the scheme will give a natural incentive for people to share cars and their running costs.
But travel demand project director Peter McCombs confirmed yesterday that cars with two or more occupants, including their drivers, would be exempted from stopping at traffic lights to be installed on three ramps on Auckland's Southern Motorway by next winter.
These would be followed from late next year by priority lanes on at least eight other ramps on the Northern and Northwestern Motorways.
All 31 on-ramps between Papakura and the Harbour Bridge are to be controlled by traffic signals by August - including five sets to be switched on next month - but Transit has decided to install priority lanes on three which run uphill to the Southern Motorway. These are the southbound ramp from Grafton Gully, which is already being widened for the purpose, and northbound ramps from the Southeastern Highway and from the nearby Mt Wellington Highway.
Transit's primary reason for giving them special treatment is to allow heavy vehicles to maintain momentum, rather than having to stop at lights and then delay other traffic while trying to get back up to speed.
But Mr McCombs said the agency was glad to be able to boost the popularity of high-occupancy vehicles by adding these to the scheme and noted that Auckland's motorway network already had 25 sections in which buses were accorded priority.
His ramp-signalling project would add at least 11 more bus priority zones and he said: "We are always actively looking for new opportunities and working with councils to do so." There will be no exemptions to the first five sets of lights to go live next month - including along southbound ramps from Takanini and Papakura, northbound ramps from Curran St and Wellington St, and new links from the waterfront and the Northwestern Motorway to the Northern Motorway.
These last two will merge into one ramp controlled by a single set of lights when the final stage of the $195 million central motorway junction improvements becomes fully open to traffic on December 19.
Mr McCombs is overseeing contracts worth $50 million which should by the end of 2008 include signals on 61 on-ramps to the three motorways.
Transit is assuring sceptics that the aim is to help rather than impede traffic, by controlling vehicle flows on to motorways to the point that vehicles are less inclined to change lanes to avoid those merging into the mainstream.
Even so, Auckland's territorial councils are keeping a close eye on the project, and have secured an agreement from Transit to modify the timing of ramp signals or even turn them off if they cause unacceptable queues back along local roads.
Mr Simpson welcomed Transit's plan to exempt cars with two or more occupants from stopping at some ramps as a "small start" but was frustrated it was not allowing high-occupancy vehicles on bus lanes on the motorways.
He acknowledged his continuing opposition to allowing taxis and other high-occupancy vehicles on bus lanes in the city, but said that was because of greater space limitations and a need to protect cyclists sharing the lanes.
