Buses are boring, but

Modern buses, such as Auckland Transport's hydrogen bus manufactured by New Zealand company Global Bus Ventures, are comfortable, smooth and a far cry from what we remember from our school-bus days. Photo: Global Bus Ventures

BY DAVID GREIG

LIGHT RAIL (trams), traditional “heavy” rail, cycling, walking, and cars are the main focus of current New Zealand debates about urban transport. But our main form of public transport is buses. They tend to be taken for granted or even looked down on (“loser cruisers”), but they have more going for them than is commonly thought. They should not be forgotten when considering how to improve the ways people can move around our cities.

Attributes of modern bus systems

Modern buses, such as those on Auckland’s Northern Busway and Wellington’s electric buses, are comfortable, smooth and a far cry from what we remember from our school-bus days. They have inherited advantages that, if well exploited, translate into low costs and quick, reliable, flexible services:

• Buses are relatively cheap, tending these days to be a small add-on to large production runs in China. already there. Upgrades to create bus lanes, or separate busways with their own rights of way, can be done in stages.

• They are flexible to operate – they can peel off from a central corridor onto feeder routes, can readily divert around obstacles such as crashes and can readily adapt to one-off events.

• They are also flexible in the longer term.

They can adapt to new urban developments or can be installed just in time to help make a new development possible.

• They suit New Zealand’s low-density suburbs, yet their frequency can readily be ramped up if the density is increased.

• They are resilient – a route can immediately be changed if there is a problem caused by an earthquake, flood, burst pipes etc.

Low-cost improvements can be made

But we are not making the best of what we have. There are opportunities to improve bus services at relatively low cost:

• Greater use of traffic light timing to give buses priority or to delay them when they are running ahead of schedule. This provides a way of reducing “bunching” of buses – the first bus can be allowed through an intersection more quickly and the next one held back, so both end up on schedule. A late bus means a wait (not always well sheltered from the weather) and not arriving at the destination when expected. An early bus is similar to a cancelled bus – the bus is not there when the passengers expect it. Reliability helps attract patronage.

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• Likewise, the use of traffic light timing can improve connections – for example holding a bus back a minute if that makes it possible for passengers on a related service to make the connection, they were expecting to instead of having to wait for the next one.

• More generally, greater use of “big data” IT allows simultaneous management of bus fleets, road traffic and real-time passenger information. Buses, trucks, and cars (through mobile phones) constantly transmit information on their speed and location, so a traffic planner or algorithm can adjust flows by changing traffic light settings. But such improvements need to be actually implemented, not just installed but left turned off.

• Improved intersections to favour buses.

Examples are slip lanes that allow buses to jump ahead of traffic queued at intersections, the easing of tight turns and the widening of choke points. The changes can be modest and the cost low: – Moving a bus stop – up to $20k (excluding kerb work), with kerb and shelter work, up to $50k.

– Installing a pedestrian crossing (zebra) – $250-$750k.

– Installing a signalised crossing – $500$1.5m.

• Improved roads to favour buses, with more and wider bus lanes. An example was Fanshawe Street that leads from the Auckland CBD to the Harbour

Bridge – it was readily widened to make room for bus lanes by making better use of available road space and buying slivers of land from adjacent properties.

An example of an improvement that is waiting to happen: buses are tangled up in morning traffic at Birdwood Street in

Karori, Wellington yet there is room there to build a slip lane.

• Construction of busways – they are wider than on-road bus lanes and provide bus-only routes that are not impacted by traffic, such as the Auckland’s Northern

Busway and the new busway from Botany to Auckland Airport. Unlike rail solutions, which are much more expensive, they can be done incrementally – the bus can operate on the new section and then divert onto the normal road. In due course, the busway can be converted to light rail if that is favoured.

• Improved bus stops with entry and exit tapers so it is easier for buses to get in and out, and easier for buses to overtake each other. Reduced road cambers or higher footpaths so buses do not have to lose time “kneeling” to the right level. These changes help reduce “dwell time” (the time taken to load and unload passengers).

• Improved bus shelters that do actually provide shelter, so passengers coming to get the bus or transferring between buses are really protected from wind and rain.

• Electronic passenger information panels and apps that tell the truth. Often a bus is said to be due several minutes before it actually arrives. Part of the reason is insufficient sensors along the bus’s route – management is not sure where the buses really are so the information has conservative margin for error.

• More imaginative design and location of bus terminals. One opportunity is the nearempty site next to the Auckland Ferry

Terminal and across the road from Britomart

Railway Station. It is much bigger than the bus terminal that works effectively near

Wellington Railway Station.

• Building overhead structures (much cheaper than tunnels) in areas where there is bus-on-bus congestion, often confined to particular intersections or short stretches of road.

These modest changes would improve average bus speeds and reliability, without which potential passengers are deterred. Speed and reliability would attract more patronage, in turn justifying greater bus frequencies. That in turn would encourage a further increase in patronage, and a reduction in car use and emissions.

Other potential improvements include:

• Longer double-articulated buses, or more double decker buses, for the busier routes.

• In the longer term, new bus stations and bus designs that allow buses to load and unload on both sides.

David Greig David is an economist (Victoria, Canterbury and Harvard Universities) who has worked on transport policy in the New Zealand and Victorian (Melbourne) Treasury Departments, the Australian consulting firms Travers Morgan/Booz Allen and ACIL Allen and the Ministry of Transport. His Treasury work included bus deregulation. His Melbourne experience included the privatisation of urban train, tram, and bus services.

Buses and congestion pricing

Buses will be particularly useful if, as seems likely, New Zealand’s main cities adopt congestion pricing – that is, charging for cars’ use of busy roads in peak periods, so some users move to off-peak periods or to other modes such as public transport and cycling. It has been successful in Singapore, Sweden and to some extent London. Charging would operate through automatic number plate recognition, as already done for Tauranga’s toll roads and overseas. A strong case for congestion pricing has been made from overseas experience and several New Zealand studies1 .

As some of the motorists who face congestion prices would choose to switch to public transport, more public transport would be needed. The easiest way is with buses, because of their inherent flexibility and low costs. It is not clear in advance how many buses would be needed, but their number can be quickly adjusted in the light of experience. For example, when London introduced congestion pricing, 300 more buses were added but with hindsight only 150 were needed; the surplus buses were readily redeployed elsewhere.

Buses and light rail

Improving bus services will get greater attention as we come to grips with the extreme cost of new light rail services, up to $15 billion for just one corridor in Auckland. That would divert resources, management time and political attention from other more modest and better-value transport improvements, including relatively cheap bus investments. A 2019 Wellington study estimated $90-143 million to fix the worst bus problems, reducing typical morning peak journeys by three to nine minutes2 . A diversion from worthwhile bus projects would leave most parts of our cities (including low-income areas) to get by with little in the way of public transport improvement.