It had somewhat slipped under my radar, but back in late September transport minister Steven Joyce gave a speech to the Bus and Coach Association which made mention of changes to the operating model for public transport – and in particular made mention of the changes he had proposed to the Public Transport Management Act.
Here are the relevant parts of that speech:
Last year when I addressed this audience I stated my intention to amend the Public Transport Management Act in order to rebalance the powers of regional councils and public transport operators.
My intention had been to remove the contracting requirement from the Act and make a number of other changes to simplify procedures and ensure value for money from the system. This included allowing truly commercial services to operate relatively free from council regulation, and where there was a need for a service that could not be delivered commercially, for it to be contracted by councils in return for an appropriate level of subsidy.
Transport officials worked closely with industry and regional councils to help find practical way to meet these objectives. However it became clear that many of the levers that can advance these sit outside of the remit of the Act.
For this reason I asked officials to work on a wider review of the way bus and ferry public transport is planned, procured and delivered. This has included looking at how the sector can respond to the challenges of a constrained financial environment by taking up opportunities presented by new initiatives such as integrated ticketing.
It is clear there is no one size fits all solution for the particular challenges facing this part of the public transport sector. Ultimately to be successful – central government, operators and regional councils all need to work together to find the right combination of legislative and procurement frameworks that work for everyone.
All parties need to step up and use their skills most effectively. Taking the right commercial approach to the delivery of public transport services can grow patronage, leading to better value for money and less reliance on public subsidies.
The Bus and Coach Association has been instrumental in assisting the work done to date. Your industry brings experience from working in the system every day. It is this collective view that will help us to develop enduring policy and ensure we get the best possible value from our investments.
You will be aware that the Bus and Coach has been heavily involved with others from across the sector in developing an acceptable operating model. I am very supportive of this effort and how this is developing. I look forward to hearing about your collective efforts in the next few months in working particularly with the Auckland and Wellington regions to further develop the operating model.
I know there is still work to be done and some difficult conversations to be had. This is an important issue to get right and it will take some more time, but I am confident we are getting closer to finding a solution that will work for everyone.
At face value, this seems to be a promising development. I have discussed previously how utterly critical the Public Transport Management Act is – both to ensure we have the tools to improve public transport by giving the planning agency the ability to change routes so they’re more integrated, simple and effective and, perhaps even more importantly, ensuring that we get better value for money from our operating expenditure on PT (basically, the subsidies) than we have over the past ten years.
The thing that worries me though is how little we, as the general public who pay these subsidies and who have to put up with Auckland’s shockingly inefficient bus system, know about the new “public transport operating model”. Will Auckland Transport have the ability to stop commercial services from “cherry picking” the best routes? Will Auckland Transport have the ability to force operators to change their routes away from duplicating other routes (like how the 135 route almost perfectly duplicates the Western Railway Line)? Will the tender process for bus routes in Auckland become more competitive to ensure we get better value for money out of our PT subsidies?
It really worries me how little we know what’s going on here. While it’s a good thing the legislation isn’t being changed (for now), at least if this was happening through a legislative change process we would know what’s going on. Call me paranoid, but the whole secrecy of this process is worrying.
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Perhaps Joyce has realised what gross contracting could do for the farebix recovery ratio!
Or Joyce does it just to mess with our minds like this Joyce:I’m taking the PTMA away, Us:no no no no *time passes* Joyce:Nah I’m not doing that, Us:Um ok *looks of relief and cynical glare in direction of said person*
I wonder if he read the Paul Mees report? Lets hope so!
While I agree that we still have to wait as changes could still happen it is at least positive that he has publicly changed his mind after investigation in to the facts. Hopefully the officials that reported on it told him it would cost the county more to run services with his model than with what the PTMA allowed.
One thing he does mention is the need for planning agencies and service providers to work closely together, something that I get the impression that doesn’t work that well in Auckland at present. I assume this is mainly due to bus companies not wanting to give up commercial routes for gross contracted ones where there is a chance they could lose out to a competitor.
There are also probably some minor modifications that could be made to the act that could improve things further.
we’ve heard quite a bit of good news from the minister lately (by good, I mean not bad). Perhaps he is starting to understand how the real world works (or at least what the real world needs, and therefore how to get votes).
It is starting to become very clear that public transport is not just a left wing agenda for control and communal existence, but a necessary solution supported throughout the political spectrum (including national voters) as it makes good economic sense when you step back and take a fresh look at the lunacy of everyone commuting by car in a city… wasting so much space, energy, and time, risking safety and commanding expensive infrastructure which can never keep up in a city of more than about 500000.
I think the key part of that has been focusing on the ability of PT to reduce congestion and therefore potentially boost economic growth. The government doesn’t seem to care that much about PT’s ability to reduce social inequality or greenhouse gases, but does seem interested in things like economic agglomeration benefits and reducing congestion by getting cars of the road.
I also think they’ve been forced into it by things like the Super City election result. They don’t want to be seen as ignorant of Auckland’s wishes.
I agree- but even a couple of months ago he didn’t seem to believe in the congestion relief benefits. Comments like “currently over 90% of trips in Auckland are made by Private vehicle, and that will continue to be the case” led me to believe that he didn’t think that our underperforming network was a result of underinvestment and poor infrastructure/service-This mindset is now being proved wrong every month when the ARTA MBR comes out. On many occasions he has also implied that transport spending should be split by proportions of users using each mode- that seems only a valid approach if usage was independent of investment(same “drivers will never switch to PT” mindset once again)- otherwise it is maintaining a false equilibrium.
I am still waiting to hear him directly connect public transport with economic growth… hopefully its coming
I have certainly followed the Auckland transport blogs to find out what is happening in the real world. This is going to be an exciting period across the Auckland region for P/T and how the PTMA is managed. How we reinvigorate the bus services in the southern areas like Otara, Flat Bush and Manurewa/Clendon to give people better access to the Auckland CBD won’t be easy. It is interesting that all the new councillors (pretty certain all) have opted to be members of the transport committee chaired by Mike Lee.
That is interesting George. I think there’s a real focus on improving public transport as a key way to get Auckland’s economy growing. It’s interesting that you mention places like Otara, Manurewa etc. as I think that improving PT access for people in the poorer parts of the city can have huge benefits for them. Put simply, being car dependent is extremely expensive (car repayments, petrol, parking costs etc.) so enabling families that are struggling to be able to live with having just the one car can make a huge economic/social difference to them.
I think that integrating the bus network with the rail network through the opportunity provided by integrated ticketing will be the key. It’s impossible to provide high frequency “everywhere to everywhere” routes, so having a system where it’s easy to transfer between services means that we should be able to structure the routes much more efficiently – which means using the money saved from efficiency gains to boost frequencies and add services where they’re really needed.
But the key is having the means to undertake such changes. My worry is that the operating model that seems to have replaced the PTMA changes may make it really difficult for Auckland Transport to restructure the bus system in ways that improve its efficiency and effectiveness. Let’s hope that’s not the case.
Improving buses is the big opportunity in the short-term while we do the background planning work for our big rail projects. It’s generally pretty cheap and it’s quick to implement. Plus around 80% of our PT patronage is on buses so we really can’t afford to ignore them!
This is Joyce’s MO, looking at Fibre no one knows what’s going on – a shambles…
He really is the worst kind of politician, like Muldoon, interested in power as the ends, lacking in principals and with a healthy dose of faux common sense…