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Buses

Hop on the bus! | The bigger picture | Bus lanes | Bus priority measures | Real time passenger information | Other ways we are helping buses | Catching a bus | CBD bus lanes (west)

The bigger picture

Auckland City Council and its regional partners are committed to addressing traffic congestion in our region.

Auckland City’s Strategic Plan seeks to create an effective transport system. The implementation of bus priority measures is specifically identified as one element of achieving the plan’s vision to keep Auckland moving.

Our vision for effective transport is of a city whose people use public transport more and can move around easily, using a combination of water, rail and road transport that does not harm the environment.

There are two main ways to make Auckland City's public transport system better:

• Providing new infrastructure
• Continually improving our current services and infrastructure

Click here to find out what the Strategic Plan says about the proposed rapid transit corridor network, and improvements to existing services.

Regional strategies

The Auckland Regional Council has prepared:

• The Regional Land Transport Strategy
  • the main guiding document for all work done to improve roads, public transport, walking and cycling throughout the Auckland region.
• The Regional Passenger Transport Plan
  • to set standards for contracting services to bus, rail and ferry operators, and
  • to show how public transport will develop over the next 10 years.

Public transport for Auckland

The Regional Passenger Transport Plan describes what needs to be done in the next 10 years to improve public transport. It says the number of people using public transport in some parts of the region will need to double if the transport system as a whole is to keep operating efficiently. The plan proposes a wide range of actions, including rapid transit, bus priorities, more frequent services, new stations, new routes and more convenient ticketing. Rapid transit is a high frequency service running at least every 5 minutes at peak times, in its own right of way, unaffected by congestion. It could be provided by light rail, bus, ferry or conventional electric or diesel rail.

Rapid transit will take time to build. Also, it will not, on its own, be enough to achieve the targets for public transport. The rest of the public transport network will also need to be developed to give people better travel choices, so that it becomes easier to leave the car at home in the garage or to decide not to buy that second car.