Bays slog stretches extra 10km
Bus queues mean long walk to cars after tough event
Runners and walkers in yesterday’s sweltering Round the Bays run decided to walk the roughly 10km back to their vehicles after facing a queue for buses nearly 1km long.
While most of those who took part in the event enjoyed the day, some were left unenthused about the prospect as throngs of sweaty, hot and tired runners waited in the sun.
Event director David Blackwell said it was the first time they had offered free buses to all participants and would take all feedback on as part of their debrief for next year.
Runner Edwin Zijderveld said he and his son enjoyed the event — until they saw the queue for buses back to the city: “It was horrendous, the queue actually. One of the longest queues I have ever seen.”
He said it was close to 1km long. “We decided to walk. It’s quite a long walk back, about 10km . . . It’s a really good, fun race, DJs playing, and drinks and what-have-you. We started to walk to see where the queue started but we just gave up, and then we started walking. You couldn’t even see the end [of the queue], it was ridiculous.”
Zijderveld said they weren’t the only ones who gave up on the wait; they walked with many others back to the city. He was reluctant to complain but said it would have been nice to have more buses as the walk was a bit daunting after the run.
Others posted on social media, one writing: “Organisation for buses terrible and ran out of water”, while another said “Round the Bays you were quite awesome. Planning great until the end! Auckland Transport you are a joke! Queues and queues and queues and queues and queues just to get back to the start! An absolute letdown on an otherwise great day. Waiting, waiting, waiting . . . lucky for the Bottle-O [bottle shop] next to the bus stop.”
Blackwell said the roads were closed until 12.45pm which caused a backlog for the 30 buses waiting to leave.
“Certainly for an event of this scale, moving 30,000 people to the city and back is a big undertaking and, for a short period at our peak periods, both pre and post event, the queues were longer than we would have liked so we’ll take some learnings from that as part of our debrief with our supplier from Auckland Transport. But for those that experienced longerthan-desired wait times, we apologise and we will look to improve the transport moving forward.
“This was also the first year we did free buses for all of the participants and we increased the number of buses as well, so we certainly had enough resource and buses supplied, it was just the sheer volume of people going at those peak periods,” Blackwell said.
The queue had been cleared “well before” 2pm.
Blackwell added they had a record number of participants — 29,600, up 3500 to 4000 on last year.
“Numbers were really great this year, it’s been beautiful weather and we’re really rapt with the turnout.”