FIT will present our perspective on the Harbour Quays bus priority project. We will outline our view of the ''concept'' (why), the ''logic'' (what), and the ''physics'' (how) of the proposal. Our verdict is that the proposal is good, but can be better.
!! Concept: why Harbour Quays bus priority?
The Infrastructure Commission advises shifting less-urgent trips to off-peak times and encouraging public transport use, to free up road space for those who need it most.
The government's direction is to increase the proportion of public transport operating costs funded from private sources, such as passenger fares and advertising revenue.
Greater Wellington's strategy is to lift public transport's share of the region's mobility market, by increasing service frequency, reliability, and speed, making public transport more useful to more people for more journeys.
We expect the bus fleet will be more productive, carrying more people using the same number of buses.
!! Logic: what is Harbour Quays bus priority?
Current services are slow and unreliable. The Golden Mile has too many buses, with multiple bottlenecks, meaning all services travel at the speed of the slowest bus.
Standard practice on busy, high-demand corridors is to provide dedicated, widely spaced stops for express services. Experience shows that people will walk further for a faster service.
A corridor with express and local services needs 4 lanes, so express services can overtake local services at stops, but the Golden Mile has a 2 lane bottleneck from the south end of Lambton Quay to the north end of Courtenay Place.
The solution is a second 2-lane spine on the Harbour Quays for express services, which will also make local services on the Golden Mile faster and more reliable.
!! Physics: how will Harbour Quays bus priority work?
If you ask people to walk further for a faster service, the quality of the pedestrian experience is paramount, yet the current proposal is hostile to pedestrians.
Having to cross a 6-lane road is bad; pushing a button to do so adds insult to injury. The project needs to remove beg buttons between the Golden Mile and Harbour Quays.
People visiting Unity Books may prefer to catch a local service outside the door, rather than walk to the Quays. The design makes it impractical to transfer between local and express services at the southern end of Courtenay Place.
A more pedestrian-friendly design would use all-day contraflow bus lanes, on the middle 2 of the 6 traffic lanes. The southbound bus lane would continue on Wakefield Street, the northbound bus lane on Cable Street, on the T{a}kina side of these streets.
If contraflow bus lanes continue on Cambridge and Kent Terraces to the Basin Reserve, bus stops at the junction with Courtenay Place would let passengers transfer between express Harbour Quays and local Golden Mile services.
!! Conclusions
FIT endorses the ''concept'' and ''logic'' of the Harbour Quays bus priority project.
We invite the Councils to evaluate the current design against a contraflow option, before making a decision on the project's ''physics''.