Right: Passengers boarding the Northern Express service – at the front and back to speed things up. Clever.
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Today involved travel on the Northern Busway to Constellation Station.
This is my first real use of the Busway this month, and involved a return trip to an address near Constellation.
Busway services were excellent, but I hit one snag.
My journey originated from my regular Northcote client, and there is no bus connection between Birkenhead Transport’s services and the busway unless you cross the Harbour Bridge – twice.
And for non monthly pass users that’s crossing a two-stage boundary – twice.
Instead I hitched a ride with a teacher and friend of mine to Akoranga Station on her way home and continued from there.
There was originally a plan to make use of the service tunnel under the motorway where the toll plazas once stood, to provide a bus station there for transfers with Birkenhead services, with platforms on opposite sides of the motorway linked by the pedestrian tunnel.
The locals for some inexplicable reason got all NIMBY and the station was cancelled. They did not want a scruffy bus station in their neighbourhood. (That the busway stations are anything but scruffy and have been a phenomenal success seems to be beside the point?)
A shame, because it really lets the services on the southwestern North Shore down. Their only link is an infrequent and indirect bus to Takapuna, which has a poor busway “link” of a 400m walk from its nearest point to Smales Farm Station.
