Statistics on performance of T3 lanes on Manukau & Pah Roads

Russell James from Royal Oak

Prompted by the recent poll that was posted here on Neighbourly about the T3 lanes on Pah road (www.neighbourly.co.nz...) I contacted Auckland Transport to ask if they had any stats they could share on the performance of the lanes, this is what I got back:

"Since the implementation of the T3 lane project, some key monitoring findings (based on March 2017 survey) and initiatives include:

• Bus travel time improvement: on average, the northbound/citybound travel time improved by 14 minutes for bus/transit lane users from 29 minutes to 15 minutes. The outbound direction travel time improvement is approximately 3 minutes.

• In terms of general traffic, our data sources show no overall change in journey times for general traffic during morning peak, however there has been a 2-3 minutes delay for outbound traffic in the afternoon.

• Some local traffic redistribution has been noted through our monitoring. The right turn movement from Green Lane to the Drive travelling northbound has increased by just over 100 vehicles/peak during peak periods.

• Our survey indicates, the number of T3 vehicles increased from 119 to 249 vehicles/hour between Pah Road and Balmoral Road, whilst that north of Balmoral Road remained similar (approximately 100 vehicles/hour).

• The bus patronage increased by 20% from on average 26 to 31 people per bus during the morning peak.

• Overall, there has been an increase in people movement productivity during the morning peak period of 15 to 20%."

Anecdotally these stats very much match my personal experience as both a bus passenger and drive on this route.

Getting 15% to 20% more people moving via this corridor, cutting the journey time for bus passengers while keeping the journey time for private vehicles about the same and doing this mostly just by painting the road and putting up some signs is a great outcome in my book.