Swifter passage for Shore travellers

Akoranga Drive, a main feeder to Auckland's $290 million Northern Busway, will gain high-occupancy vehicle lanes and other upgrades such as a shared cycle and walkway for $2.7 million.

North Shore City Council will start construction over summer, in time for the completion next year of the $35 million Esmonde Rd interchange with the Northern Motorway, which will also supply a two-way traffic link between Akoranga Drive and Takapuna.

The council will build median barriers between opposing carriageways in Akoranga Drive to cope with extra traffic to and past such major "trip generators" as The Warehouse's head office and the Auckland University of Technology's northern campus.

Only buses or other vehicles carrying at least three people will be allowed in the inside lanes during peak hours, but the council has agreed, after consulting residents, to allow parking there at other times.

Some parts of Akoranga Drive will have to be widened and its intersections with College Rd and The Warehouse Way upgraded.

The council was well ahead of the rest of the country in introducing in 1982 the first high-occupancy vehicle lane, in Onewa Rd, and is planning similar devices to streamline traffic flows on other busway feeder routes.

These will include Constellation Drive, Shakespeare Rd, Forrest Hill Rd and East Coast Rd.

A westbound lane along Constellation Drive requiring minimal work will be ready in time for the opening of a bus station there next month, but an eastbound lane for which the road will have to be widened, at a cost of about $1.5 million, will take a lot longer to complete.

But there will be no great urgency for it until the busway opens in 2008 and the council intends applying to Land Transport New Zealand for subsidies to build both the Constellation and Akoranga priority lanes.

Buses will be funnelled until then on to the Northern Motorway through the Constellation Drive station and another in Albany, also to be opened next month.