KEY POINTS:
The new $295 million Northern Busway in Auckland - New Zealand's first two-way road exclusively for buses - had its first peak-hour test yesterday. Herald reporters Mathew Dearnaley and Errol Kiong 'raced' to work by bus and by car from the Constellation bus station to Britomart, to see if the megamillion-dollar investment would cut peak-hour travel times. No doubt to the huge relief of transport planners, the bus had a hands-down win, making the trip in half the 44 minutes it took the car to grind its way to central Auckland.
Mathew Dearnaley
22 minutes
It feels in places like a quiet South Island highway - an empty expanse of two-lane black-top before us belying that we are commuting along one of Auckland's most congested transport corridors.
This, at last, is the $295 million Northern Busway, parallel to the choked Northern Motorway and being road-tested by southbound bus services before its official opening in February.
Northbound buses will start using it next month, but until then it will be a dream run for those heading to the Harbour Bridge, with nothing coming the other way.
The commuting nightmare of crawling metal in three or four motorway lanes and their on-ramps is never far from North Shore's de facto train system on rubber wheels.
It's a sight to behold from our exclusive road, especially as we pass over the sweeping 360m viaduct that takes the busway directly above the difficult Tristram Ave motorway interchange.
But when our lonely bus disappears behind one of several large retaining walls or into an underpass along the 6.24km busway between Constellation Drive and Esmonde Rd in Takapuna, it becomes a case of out of sight and out of mind, in which it is easy to forget the plight of the motorists we have been whizzing past.
I board the Ritchies Transport bus at the Constellation bus station at 7.58am with about 30 other passengers.
It is not one of Ritchies main trunk Northern Express buses - this one started its trip in suburban Albany.
It's not something that a mainland Auckland would realise, but this means its its city destination is Albert St, which puts me slightly off-course from the Britomart finish-line I have negotiated with my colleague Errol for our one-sided contest of car versus bus.
But like the Northern Express buses, which leave every seven minutes during the morning commuting peak, it has the run of the busway - and a smooth one at that.
While Errol is stewing on the Constellation motorway on-ramp, we breeze down the hill and past the new Sunnynook bus station - the smallest on the busway - less than two minutes later. Even though our driver is keeping his speed to a steady 50km/h - the new road surface is still consolidating - we sail past the Smales Farm (Westlake) station and to the end of the busway at Akoranga in Takapuna in another five minutes before preparing to join the motorway for the dreaded trek over the Harbour Bridge.
Luckily the general traffic has thinned by now, and we are able to complete the remaining 7km to Auckland at a reasonable clip, which spoils us for a minute-plus wait at lights at the Quay St-Albert St intersection.
Having caught the wrong bus, I spend two more minutes walking from there to Britomart, but have still managed to get there in half the time it took Errol.
That leaves me enough time to chat to a Northern Express driver standing outside his bus with a cuppa and delighted at reducing his normal peak-hour trip of about 40 minutes from Albany.
"I have just shaved 15 minutes off my trip," he says. "Without that I wouldn't be here talking to you with a cup of coffee."
Errol Kiong
44 minutes
As a North Shore resident I would normally be confident of a win.
I routinely travel the Shore-City route, and know every nook and cranny of the Northern Motorway southbound to central Auckland.
But like a daytime TV psychic, I had an inkling this was going to be no contest well before I even reached the Constellation bus station.
The barely moving parking lot on the other side of the motorway may have been a clue.
Then there was the 13 minutes trying to get to the motorway from the Constellation Drive on-ramp.
Five buses whizzed by on the busway during that time, and Mathew was on one of them.
The buses glinted superiority, if it was possible for a hunk of moving metal to look smug. I am sure Mathew would have been glinting, too.
Breakfast radio was debating its usually dreary issues on that dreary Auckland morning; the pros and cons of wearing shoes around the house was the topic du jour.
Stilettos are apparently a killer on a polished wooden floor.
Rumour has it the top speed was40km/h between Constellation Drive and Esmonde Rd, but I could only trundle along at 20km/h.
And I couldn't even blame the Herald's company Hyundai, a vehicle that normally requires the same bribery and coercion as a camel.
But then, just as all seemed lost, my fellow motorists seemed to disappear and the motorway became miraculously free-flowing.
In a moment, my pace had quickened and the southern dash to the Waitemata's only man-made crossing - that's the Auckland Harbour Bridge to those of you who never venture north - became a doddle.
Did I imagine a ray of heavenly light breaking through the cloud as I attained 80km/h, the miles suddenly disappearing behind me?
But it was all for naught.
In the end I was soundly beaten by my bus-taking colleague - who arrived at work some 25 minutes before me.
He'd even had the temerity to stop and chat with a bus driver - and indulge in a takeaway coffee - on his way to the office.
I had forgotten, as I sailed over the Harbour Bridge, that I had yet to navigate the snarled and congested byways of the central city.
I spent a full six minutes battling through about four million traffic lights to get to Britomart
Had I needed to park, that empty space 100m from the station's entrance would have brought tears to my eyes.
