KEY POINTS:
Margie Rice was a first-day commuter when Auckland's Northern Express bus service began in 2005, and yesterday she was feted as its millionth passenger.
The Mairangi Bay language teacher was festooned with gifts from North Shore Mayor George Wood and Auckland Regional Transport Authority chief executive Fergus Gammie on a mid-afternoon bus from Britomart to Constellation Drive, which was almost full despite beating the travel peak across the Harbour Bridge.
All 50 passengers received a red rose, chocolates and a free ticket as they boarded the bus, but it was not until a brief stop en route that Mrs Rice was singled out as the millionth passenger since the service began in November, 2005.
She received more free tickets and a bottle of French champagne to mark her out from the crowd.
The popularity of the main-trunk service, which provides commuters with peak-time buses every seven or eight minutes down the Northern Motorway and every 15 minutes at other times, means yesterday's celebration happened three months earlier than initially predicted.
The service began early to ramp up demand for the $290 million Northern Busway, which the transport authority expects to carry more people during the morning peak than the adjacent six lanes of State Highway One after it opens in February.
Mrs Rice has been a loyal passenger since the first day of the service, which almost halved the 45 to 50 minutes it used to take to wind her way by suburban bus to her job at the Geos Auckland Language Centre, although she admits sometimes taking a car if she needs to go shopping on her way home.
But she reminded Mr Wood and Mr Gammie of a squeeze on the 400 vehicle spaces at the Constellation bus station's free park-and-ride area.
Although a resource consent restriction means no more spaces can be made available there, about 180 have been added in recent months to the 350 initially provided at the Albany bus station further north.
Even that gets close to full on many mornings, despite an additional investment of $750,000 by North Shore City Council and the transport authority, but Mr Wood promises relief when the busway proper opens in February.
He said that the transport authority intended to introduce an interim seamless ticket. This would encourage more commuters to use feeder buses in order to reach the busway stations from their homes, rather than driving there.
The lack of such a ticket means passengers now have to pay separate fares to more than one bus company, so the authority is under pressure to make journeys cheaper and easier before the busway opens.
"There will be one fare for the whole trip and it is going to be magic," Mr Wood assured Mrs Rice and her fellow passengers.
ON THE BUSES
* An average of 57,000 tickets are sold each month on the Northern Express service.
* It is estimated to have removed 540 cars from the motorway during morning travel peaks.
