Auckland Transport aims to have a bus stop every 400m on most Auckland roads. Photo: Duoya Lu
- This story has been corrected to say that one could take a bus from Newmarket's biggest mall and get off it a little more than 80-100m up the road.
If you think you have a long way to walk to your closest Auckland bus stop, spare a thought for the longest break between stops the region boasts overall - more than a whopping 25km.
By contrast, Newmarket is the Auckland area with the shortest distance between bus stops. Near the suburb's biggest mall, one could hop on a bus and then get off it little more than 80-100m up the road at the next stop, if they wished.
Designing Auckland's bus routes is a complex task balancing convenience, efficiency and geography.
Pete Moth, Auckland Transport's head of public transport services planning and development, told Nights the City of Sails was a "hugely challenging" city to get it right in - but it was essential to try and do so.
Between the two extremes of 10m and 25km there was a magic number the Auckland Transport team tried to land on for the distance between stops.
"We generally try and place our stops roughly 400m apart along route," Moth said.
"The bus stops generally come in pairs, so they're usually as close as they can be opposite one another. Then when you're getting off the bus in the morning, you can get back in the afternoon and catch a bus from the opposite side of the road.
"It's not always possible, but that's the general principle."
Geography and physical barriers meant that perfect ideal of a bus stop either side of the road every 400m was far from always achieved, and the land usage in the area meant planners exercised a lot of variation as well.
"If you're traveling on the 995, our bus route that goes from Warkworth to the Hibiscus Coast, there's a long section there of over 25km between bus stops. That section is largely on the motorway... and also it's going through rural areas," Moth said.
"In some of our denser urban areas, such as Ponsonby Rd or Newmarket, you'll find bus stops much closer together.
"Around the [Newmarket] Westfield Mall we've actually got stops at either side of the intersection there, which is used by Route 70, one of our busiest buses.
"Those are probably a little closer together than we'd ideally like, but that's just an example of a quirk that's crept in over the years. The network's being built up incrementally, so there are there are some historical quirks out there."
Moth said Auckland Transport was sometimes questioned by the public about bus stop pacing and conceded it was "never going to be perfect", but the team tried to make it as optimal as possible.
Drivers may complain about the priority given to buses, but Moth said it was important to make sure bus journeys were reliable.
"As well as the route design, it's just as important to make sure that that the journey is reliable," said Moth.
"What puts people off public transport is when they can't rely on it. If they have to be at an office job by 8.30am, for example, and it's taking them 50 minutes travelling at 8am, then that they're quickly going to lose patience with that service.
"It's really important to have a service that's reliable. A large part of that comes down to giving the buses priority and making sure they get as much of a clear run as they can, and that's a huge challenge in Auckland.
"We try and make sure the buses have a good run and that can come in many forms. It can be having bus boosters at signals... [so they can] change in advance of the bus arriving at the intersection so it gets a green flow through the intersection. It can be bus lanes, T2 lanes and T3 lanes."
