KEY POINTS:
Buses are likely to have their own two-lane road beside Auckland's Northern Motorway before Christmas as a $295 million rapid-transit project races to completion.
Although the official opening of the long-awaited Northern Busway between Constellation Drive and Takapuna will be in early February, Transit New Zealand said yesterday
it should be ready for buses to use in both directions from about the middle of next month.
Project director Mark Johnson said services would be able to run the full distance, although passengers would not get to use three new bus stations nearing completion at Takapuna, Westlake and Sunnynook until February 3, the day after a grand opening.
That would enable Transit to move buses off a northbound shoulder of the motorway and make room to build another general traffic lane between Northcote Rd and Sunnynook - a separate project costing $9.4 million.
The new stations will be in addition to two the North Shore City Council opened two years ago at Constellation Drive and at Albany, which feed more than 2000 passengers a day through the motorway, removing about 500 cars from morning traffic jams.
The three new bus stations will not have the extensive park and ride areas available to commuters joining the busway at the original stations, as transport officers want to encourage people to use feeder buses or arrive on foot or bicycles, for which storage lockers and racks will be provided.
Five-minute dropping-off zones are the only concession to cars at the new stations, unlike at the two northern sites, where Mr Johnson said parking areas were provided for commuters living too far from bus routes.
But unlike at most Auckland railway stations, bus passengers are promised "clean and modern"toilets at all their stations.
Although the transport authority is still more than two years away from introducing an electronic smart-card for passengers to use on rival services, it plans to introduce an interim paper ticket to North Shore routes by February to boost use of feeder buses.
That will allow passengers to switch buses at the stations without having to buy more than one ticket.
Takapuna's Akoranga bus station will also have an enclosed 100m pedestrian bridge above the busway and seven motorway lanes so students can reach it from the Auckland University of Technology's Akoranga campus.
But they will not need to try to break any sprint records, as the transport authority says buses will stop there almost every two minutes at peak times.
Other major structures include a 360m viaduct above the Tristram Ave motorway interchange, a bridge over Wairau Rd, and tunnels to carry buses under Northcote Rd and Esmonde Rd. These have been built large and strong enough to carry a light rail system, if a decision is taken in future to add such a capability to another harbour crossing and to replace buses as the North Shore's preferred rapid-transit mode.