Park-and-ride success has transport planners on hop

Full-up signs at carparks at Auckland's two new northern bus stations have transport planners scrambling to ensure a giddying growth in custom does not cave in on itself.

The free "park-and-ride" areas at the Albany and Constellation stations along the Northern Motorway risk becoming victims of their own success, with their more than 700 spaces overflowing most mornings.

Porsches and a Rolls-Royce have been spotted parked in spaces overseen by security guards and closed-circuit television cameras, which have ensured the fast recovery of the only car to have been stolen in the four months since the stations opened.

But the carparks are becoming full from about 8.30 most mornings, especially with the return of students to the commuter rush, and planners are considering how to give early warnings of spaces running out.

An almost trebling of patronage since November on the main-trunk "Northern Express" bus service between Albany and Britomart - to almost 2100 passenger trips a day - has already led to an increase in peak-time departures.

An extra bus has been added to a seven-vehicle fleet run by Ritchies Transport, to allow a 10-minute citybound frequency between 7am and 8am each weekday and between 5pm and 6pm in the other direction.

Buses leave every 15 minutes the rest of the time, between 5.45am and 10.45pm.

Now, the Auckland Regional Transport Authority is preparing a survey of passengers' travel needs before deciding how to cope with the parking overload.

Although North Shore City Council has plenty of space around Albany station for more carparks, authority passenger services chief Heather Haselgrove said the priority was to discover where people came from.

"It may be that we need to put park-and-rides further out," she said.

Ms Haselgrove, a recent recruit from Australia, said it had been hard to forecast demand for what were the region's first such facilities.

She said a balance was needed in how passengers reached the stations, whether by car, feeder-buses, walking or cycling.

She acknowledged it might be worthwhile introducing a text-message service to warn people when carparks fill up, similar to a well-established system which tells rail passengers when trains are running late.

The two bus stations are the first of five planned along the partly built $290 million Northern Busway, due to open in 2008. The rest will be pay carparks closer to Auckland.

Transit busway project director Clive Fuhr said the North Shore council initially hoped to have up to 1500 parking spaces at the Constellation station but was curbed by the Environment Court. "Local landowners said it was unnecessary ... so the consent is limited to just over 400 cars."

Mr Fuhr said the ideal was for people to use buses running near their homes to reach the motorway but the park-and-ride facilities had given a valuable boost to the new service.

"I think they have introduced a whole lot of new people to public transport who wouldn't have used it before."

He said Transit was working with the Rodney District Council on possibly extending bus priority measures north to Orewa.

Shore Mayor George Wood, whose council is sharing the $85 million cost of the stations, said the new service's popularity increased the need for a seamless ticket which rival bus operators would have to honour.

Passengers now boarding Stagecoach feeder services have to buy separate tickets if they transfer to Ritchies buses at the stations.

Mr Wood said his council hoped Land Transport would this month approve a $10 million subsidy for local projects, including bus priority lanes on station feeder routes.