Traffic fails to flow according to the plan

By JASON COLLIE transport reporter

A new bus lane in Fanshawe St designed to give a speedier ride into Auckland city had the opposite effect on its first morning yesterday.

Commuter confusion and the funnelling of drivers into one fewerfewer lane saw traffic - including the buses that were supposed to cut about 30 seconds off journey times - stacked back along the motorway at St Marys Bay and over the Harbour Bridge.

Bus passengers complained that it added between five and 15 minutes to their journeys to work.

Auckland City Council transport planners said they hoped it was teething problems, while Transit New Zealand accepted some blame because work on a new bus lane under the Shelley Beach Rd off-ramp is three months behind schedule.

The Fanshawe St bus lanes, between the motorway and Nelson St in both directions, were forecast to save between 30 seconds and a minute by keeping buses out of the traffic queues.

Passenger Noel Taylor, who gave up driving his car in from Mairangi Bay about six weeks ago because of traffic congestion, complained to Auckland Mayor Christine Fletcher that the tailbacks had delayed him 15 minutes.

"The planners have had a good concept, but the execution is a dismal failure," said Mr Taylor.

"I think this is going to continue because the buses are now trapped into that queue of traffic being shoved down a small funnel.

"I'm going to have to take an earlier bus, so I may as well just take my car."

Denis Mander, a principal transport planner at the council, said it would take a few days for the traffic to sort itself out.

The citybound lane for the morning rush-hour is a six-month trial, but Mr Mander said that council staff would monitor it and change it sooner if the snarl-ups continued.

The congestion was not helped because many drivers did not realise that while a lane citybound had been given over to buses, the council had retained two lanes going straight ahead through the Halsey St intersection by cutting the number of right-turn lanes to one, he said.

"Obviously we do not want to be slowing down journeys.

"We are trying to look at ways of improving the capacity of the transport system and it is measures like these that we have to look at."

Mr Mander said there had been no problems on the citybound bus lane in Great South Rd, between Greenlane Rd and Alpers Ave, which also came into effect yesterday.

Transit's regional traffic operations manager, Derrick Hitchens, said a bus lane beneath the Shelley Beach Rd off-ramp would help to alleviate the queues because buses could use the outside clip-on lane and merge closer to the city.

The 400m lane was supposed to be built to coincide with the Fanshawe St scheme.

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