Te Ara Hauāuru - Northwest Busway

3 December 2025

Thank you for meeting with us

A big thank you to those who were able to attend our recent community information sessions along the project corridor. 

We hosted 5 sessions from Westgate to Grey Lynn and had detailed conversations with over 200 people.  We also reached over 75,000+ people on social media with high engagement on our updated project video.

During the sessions we shared indicative station layouts and visuals of how the stations could look, along with a map showing the proposed busway alignment. 

You can find all the information shared at the sessions under the “Resources” tab on the project webpage here.

What we heard

The project team were thankful for all the feedback provided at these sessions.

We encourage you to check out the summary document available on our project website.

Environmental impacts – Some community members expressed the importance of minimising impacts on their local environments, in particular Arch Hill Reserve and Harbourview Ōrangihina Park (more detail below).

Noise and visual impacts - Residents were concerned about the potential construction and operational noise and visual impacts of the proposed connecting structures at Te Atatū and Newton (more detail below).

Experiences on WX1 - WX1 riders shared their experiences of the service, indicating areas which could be improved and what’s going well.

Opportunities for engagement - We heard from some attendees that they’d like to see more and further opportunities for engagement.

Harbourview Ōrangihina Park

Following community engagement, we’ve prepared a visual from another angle on the proposed Te Atatū station which will also be available on our project website. The proposed new bridge across State Highway 16 from the Te Atatū station to the edge of Harbourview Ōrangihina Park will be located on the western edge of the reserve, adjacent to Te Atatū Road. Buses will operate along the existing motorway corridor between the interchange and the Whau River bridge, with no widening of the roading corridor proposed.

Newton Connection and the Waima-Haslett footbridge

We’ve heard from people the great service the Waima-Haslett footbridge provides to communities including local schools on either side of the bridge. The current design proposes the future busway goes over the footbridge and then underneath Newton Road bridge, landing at Ian McKinnon Drive (road level) where buses will then move to street-running into the city centre. Further design and refinement, including how the proposed bridge will look and how it will be built, will be developed as part of future project stages.

Next steps

We intend to lodge Notices of Requirement to designate the project corridor and other statutory approval applications for the project via the Fast-track Approvals Act in December 2025.  

Under the Fast-track Approvals Act, NZTA will lodge the approval applications with the Environmental Protection Authority (EPA).  Shortly after that, the application material will be publicly available on the fast-track website.

The EPA will then appoint an independent panel to consider the applications. We anticipate the panel will be appointed in March 2026. The project team will provide regular progress updates via this newsletter.

A high-level overview of the process is available on the project website.

Contact us

For more information about the project, please visit:

https://www.nzta.govt.nz/projects/northwest-busway

If you have any questions or would like to get in touch with the project team, you are welcome to do so by email or phone.

Email: nwbusway@nzta.govt.nz 

Phone: 0800 469 7270 (0800 4 NWRAPID)