Motorway bus lane blocked by drivers

Auckland bus drivers are finding it too difficult to use a Northwest Motorway bus lane at rush hour.

Scores of vehicles from the city queue at peak times along a new bus lane in order to exit at Te Atatu off ramp, blocking it for buses.

Te Atatu resident and regular bus commuter Pshem Kowalczyk posted video to Twitter on October 10 of the problem – as his bus drove past in a traffic lane.

‘‘While the cars pile up to get off the motorway ... people join the car in front and are completely unaware that this is actually a bus lane.

‘‘And then before you know it they are all the way back to Patiki,’’ Kowalczyk says.

Brett Gliddon is the highway manager for the NZ Transport Agency in Auckland.

He says the bus lane was opened in May, and the agency is aware that motorists are blocking it.

‘‘While we understand that motorists are doing this to shorten their wait in the queue to exit, we don’t encourage the use of bus lanes in this way,’’ he says.

‘‘We are currently reviewing the operation of the bus lane and the off ramp during peak hours to see if any changes would improve the efficiency and safety of the current layout.’’

Kowalczyk says he has commuted to work in the city by bus most work days for the past few years.

He is a member of Generation Zero and says his morning bus to town is also taking on average about 15 minutes longer since the recent opening of a fourth traffic lane across the causeway from Te Atatu.

It is being caught in ‘‘a huge backlog’’ as the fourth lane is exit only at Pt Chevalier, and all the city-bound traffic merges into three lanes, he says.

Kowalczyk would prefer that the recently opened fourth traffic lane was a shoulder bus lane – like it was before the causeway improvement work started.

Ideally though, a gradeseparated busway all the way into town ‘‘is the only reasonable option’’ so that buses are not slowed by broken-down cars or by merging into the traffic at motorway exits, he says.

Work on the Northwest Motorway, including the reopening of bus lanes across the causeway, is due to be complete by the time the Waterview Tunnel opens in early 2017 and connects State Highways 20 and 16 as part of the Western Ring Route project.