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Which transit services in Auckland travel the furthest?

I got this question a couple of weeks ago, and I realized I was in a pretty good position to answer it. Waka already has all the required data in it, so it was a matter of writing a couple of SQL queries.

These results were obtained for the week of November 5th - 11th, 2018. All routes are bus routes if not specified otherwise.

What are the longest routes in Auckland? #

The first question is simple - what are the longest routes in Auckland (school buses excluded).

Code Route Description Length (km)
125X Helensville To City Centre Via Westgate Express 58.96
396 Pukekohe Interchange To Waiuku Loop Via Patumahoe 49.49
SKY Airport To Albany - Commercial Bus 47.68
399 Pukekohe To Port Waikato Via Tuakau 44.21
171X City Centre To New Lynn Via Laingholm 39.23
125 Helensville To Westgate 38.48
997 Warkworth To Omaha Via Matakana And Port Wells 37.60
395 Waiuku To Papakura Interchange 35.70
N11 City To Papakura Via Great South Rd - Night Bus 34.47
120 Akoranga to Henderson 32.82

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These results are not particularly interesting. The majority of the above services are semi rural, and don’t have great frequency.

What are the shortest routes in Auckland? #

Ignoring the weird routes that aren’t really routes (i.e short running services) and school buses, here are the shortest routes in Auckland.

Code Route Description Length (km)
SBAY Auckland To Stanley Bay - Ferry 2.17
BAYS Bayswater To Auckland - Ferry 2.35
DEV Auckland To Devonport - Ferry 3.11
890 Albany Station To Corinthian Dr Loop 3.51
987 Arkles Bay Loop 3.80
BIRK Auckland To Birkenhead Via Northcote Point - Ferry 4.08
161 New Lynn to Brains Park 4.17
807 Devonport Wharf To Cheltenham Loop 4.21
842 Smales Farm Station To Crown Hill Via East Coast Rd 4.44
889 Constellation Station To Albany Station Via Hugh Green Dr 5.18

It’s interesting to see that there are no services under 2km, and most of these short services are ferries or local loops.

Which routes in Auckland have most services per week. #

This includes both short/long running services - there’s no good way split them out.

Route Services per Week
NX1 2687
NX2 1788
InnerLink 1490
70 1427
SkyBus - Commercial Bus 1387
18 1379
OuterLink 1304
82 1164
CityLink 1164
25B 1147

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The NX1 has the most services by far, but there’s also a lot of services that start halfway through the route. The InnerLink & OuterLink is also fairly high (and the real frequency is high), but because they’re weird loops the route can be split into a bunch of segments (the smallest being 900m).

The SkyBus is deceiving, because there’s essentially 3 routes under the same code - Albany to Airport, City to Airport via Mt Eden Road, and City to Airport via Dominion Road.

Which transit services in Auckland travel the furthest each week? #

Now we’ll combine the number of services with how far they go, grouping by the route code.

Route Distance Traveled per Week (km)
NX1 57,378
SkyBus - Commerical Bus 55,605
OuterLink 32,326
NX2 32,118
70 30,257
380 30,233
Southern Line - Train 28,070
Western Line - Train 25,143
Eastern Line - Train 21,872
83 21,153

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The NX1 comes out on top - the frequency is good, and as it travels a long distance on the busway and motorway. In many ways the SkyBus is similar - it travels quite far on the busway and motorway with good frequency, but it is a little deceiving as mentioned earlier.

It’s not surprising to see some of our long frequent routes in here too - OUT, NX2, 70, and 83. Our trains also make an appearance - while the frequency is not as good as some of our bus network, the trains tend to travel longer distances.

The most interesting apperance in here is the 380. It is not classified as a frequent service, but it has 15-20 minute service all day. As it is an airport bus, it starts extremely early (4:40am) and ends very late (12:40am) every day. It’s also a bit of a silly route - it really should be split into two halves - Airport to Manukau, and Airport to Onehunga/Mangere.