Radio NZ data journalist Farah Hancock has been digging into the issue of bus cancellations in Auckland and Wellington and has started a fascinating series about it.

In the first article on Monday, she’s taken a look at the overall picture based on data from February.

On an average weekday last month in February, 1085 Auckland buses listed in timetables failed to show up.

In Wellington, an average of 448 daily cancellations left passengers stranded.

The data, revealed in an RNZ investigation launched today, is evidence of urban bus networks in crisis, according to critics.

A live tally set up for the day of the article showed that a month on, that trend is still holding with 1,040 buses cancelled in Auckland on Monday and 404 in Wellington (that itself sounds like it’s part of a joke – 404 bus not found)

But these numbers are based off cancellations to the current timetable and so would be a lot worse if they also counted the original timetables that were in force before Auckland Transport removed around 1,000 trips a day last year. And if the mayors proposed budget passes, those cuts will become permanent as part of a plan for Auckland Transport to find $25 million in savings.

Both cities trimmed bus timetables in late 2022 due to frequent cancellations.

Wellingtonians used to get an average of 3621 trips on weekdays. Roughly 143 trips were removed but driver shortages meant an additional 448 trips on a typical weekday were cancelled.

Prior to Auckland Transport removing or pausing certain services in the latter half of 2022, Aucklanders expected an average of 12,696 weekday trips. In the month of February, weekday trips averaged 10,669.

As I’m quoted as saying in the article, I think public transport right now is a “system in crisis”, one that is already putting a lot of people off using buses and that if not fixed soon, one that is likely to have significant long term implications for PT use in this city.

However, it’s clear AT have their head in the sand as to just how serious this is, effectively saying “Look at all the buses we didn’t cancel yet”.

Auckland Transport metro optimisation manager Richard Harrison, however, insisted the city’s bus system was in good shape.

“I’m a user of the bus services, I would describe them as great. They’re constrained, they’re challenged, but we’re still running 12,000 services a day.”

When asked whether “great” was a disconnect with the reality of daily cancellations frequently in excess of 1000, he explained Auckland Transport had spread trip suspensions and cancellations across the network.

The summary above highlights that the worst effected area in Auckland is the North Shore followed by the Central Isthmus. That’s important as those are areas typically account for around 70% of all ridership so those cancellations are likely to have a disproportionate impact on ridership.

Yesterday looked at the worst routes in both cities and based on above, it’s no surprise that the North Shore is in the worst shape, with some routes seeing one in three buses cancelled.

In Auckland, it’s the 845, which had more than a third of its scheduled trips cancelled in February. The service between Milford and Takapuna on Auckland’s North Shore includes stops at schools and North Shore Hospital.

[…..]

The 845 route is one of 16 that operate in North Auckland among the 20 worst routes for cancellations.

North Shore ward councillor Chris Darby said he’s heard frustration from constituents.

“Right now our bus service is missing the back axle, so to speak,” Darby said.

Parts of a city can be hit harder than others because of the way the contracts are awarded to private companies. Routes are bundled into ‘units’ and companies bid to secure the contract for the unit. If the company holding the contract struggles to retain and recruit drivers, passengers in that unit will be hit with cancellations.

Five different companies run northern services: Ritchies, Tranzurban, NZ Bus, Go Bus, and Bayes Coachlines.

Ritchies, which runs 62 percent of northern trips, cancelled 17 percent of weekday trips during February. Tranzurban runs a single service, the NX2 from Hibiscus Coast to Auckland University. It ranked 12th worst for the percentage of weekday trips cancelled. During February, more than 1300 of approximately 5000 scheduled trips were cancelled, representing a quarter of timetabled trips not occurring.

NZ Bus, which runs almost 20 percent of trips, had 2 percent cancelled.

The article also includes a couple of interactive graphics. One lets you select a route and see just how many cancellations there were each day in February while a second ranks all routes.

Another thing it highlights to me that while the bus driver shortage has improved a bit recently, things are likely to get worse again as we head into cold and flu season.

Unsurprisingly, most cancellations are happening at peak time as this is where we need a lot of extra drivers and buses to cope with higher demand.

For those interested in Wellington’s worst routes can see them here with the same breakdowns.

The work so far by Farah is fantastic but also it’s something she shouldn’t have had to do. To me, as part of how they try and manage this crisis, AT should be publishing this sort of thing themselves in order to show that they understand the issue, as well as the things they’re doing to try and make the situation better. As it stands, they seem either oblivious to the issue or unsympathetic to the thousands of Aucklanders suffering as a result of it.

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53 comments

  1. How many bus drivers are being diverted into “rail replacement services”? Plus the endless sprawl means more buses and more drivers in places like Omaha and Wellsford. However, despite the issues, most buses are running and getting excellent passenger loadings.

  2. When the only effective variable cost is labour this is what PTOM led to.

    Another article today.

    https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/in-depth/487361/bus-drivers-keep-quitting-even-as-conditions-and-pay-slowly-improve

    “In 1990, the minimum you could pay a bus driver was 66 percent above the minimum wage.”

    After deregulation of the industry in the 1990s, this plummeted. By 2019 Miller said wages were 10 to 15 percent above minimum wage. Drivers swapped buses for trucks in search of better pay, he said.

    To get back to the 66 percent above minimum wage level, hourly pay would need to rise to $35.19 per hour, and $37.86 per hour after the latest minimum wage increases this month. Currently, a bus driver’s minimum hourly pay is between $26 to $27 an hour.

    1. Actually it was the so called reforms of the early 90s copied from England which collapsed bus driver pay and conditions. And bus useage. PTOM was an improvement on the situation in many ways.

        1. Long term contracts delivered a dramatic improvement in bus quality. You wouldn’t believe how bad the situation got in the 90s, no new bus purchases so old vehicles soldiered on with minimal maintenance. Ditching the commercial/non- commercial tendering system did away with disaster of having multiple bus companies running the same bus route, none of which would accept the other’s tickets.

        2. That’s just two, rather than “many” – and the commercial/non-commercial mess still exists, while the marginal bus ticket issue is hardly that significant in NZ.

          But the one major benefit (at a price!) that you have overlooked is facilitating the establishment of proper integrated networks, the precise opposite of the English reforms that you referred to.

      1. Cesta. Anyone who ever saw a Cesta bus (usually broken down somewhere) will know that things are a hell of a lot better now than back then.

        1. Cesta was definitely the worst of the flock of independent operators who thought that operating buses was a quick and easy way of making money with minimal – and I really do mean minimal – capital and operating expenses.

          The ones on the Dunedin hill routes used to belch out a thick cloud of black exhaust whenever they had to do a standing start on a slope. After many years of this the Otago Regional Council finally took action only after one of the Cesta bus’s brakes failed. Fortunately it was on one of the few flat bits of Dunedin at the time or the consequences would have been very serious indeed!

    2. Alternatively minimum wage could be reduced to $16.26.
      When compared to our median wage of $29.66, our minimum wage of $22.70 is the highest in the developed world by proportion. This was not the case back in 1990, when average wage was about $11.25 and minimum wage was $6.125, so the 66% proportion from back then is not something that can be directly applied today.
      $6.125 + 66% = $10.17, which is about 10% less than average wage. 10% less than $29.66 = $26.81, so arguably bus drivers are paid about the same as they were then, when compared with average wage.

      1. “Alternatively minimum wage could be reduced to $16.26.”

        Oh yeah, because people who won’t want to work a badly paid job (especially in relative terms to, say, driving a truck, or working in retail) will be sooooo impressed if you tell them that the same wage as before is now much more, percentage wise?

        Do you work minimum wage, or try to survive on it in Auckland’s housing market? Cause housing ain’t costing what it did in 1990.

        Such a capitalist approach, and so far from both humanity and sense.

        1. Oh yeah, because people who won’t want to work a badly paid job (especially in relative terms to, say, driving a truck, or working in retail) will be sooooo impressed if you tell them that the same wage as before is now much more, percentage wise?

          Which all goes to highlight the silliness of comparing people’s wages against minimum wage like its some moral contest, which is what I interpreted Anthony’s comment as pointing out. Peoples earnings are not measured relative to minimum wage. It was a dumb comparison when applied the other way as well.

          And housing theory of everything. Single biggest problem the country faces, feeds every other problem.

      2. Thank you Mr Seymour.

        Why is it that people who are not Luxon’s “bottom feeders” so intolerant of those are are unable to make enough money to feed their kids, drive to their midnight cleaning jobs, get home at 0600 to get the kids ready for school and so on?

  3. What’s the Japanese metric for whether a train is ‘on time’ or not? Is it 30 seconds within scheduled arrival? In Auckland, the train lines are soon to be shut and we can’t run the bus service that’s meant to be picking up the slack.

    I genuinely think this is beyond the capability of local knowledge to fix. We need to get some international operational expertise from countries that don’t tolerate this kind of performance and our input should be limited to asking how big the cheque needs to be to make things work properly.

    1. How much money did the Japanese spend on urban commuter rail in the 70s/80s/90s and how much money did Auckland spend? To fix that will cause disruption, international expertise or not.

    2. Hi Buttwizard – I think we’d be able to fix this ourselves. The issue is money (for PT funding in general, and driver wages specifically) and culture. WANTING to change things. Sadly, culture change cannot be imported (easily).

      I mean we’ve had a rolling conga line of overseas experts, well-meaning and skilled people visit or work with us on matters such as improving cycling. Lots of our engineers and designers are also either from places like the UK or other areas of Europe or Asia where cycling is (or increasingly is) a serious mode of transport. London and Paris are far outdistancing us. The impact has been… well, we can’t compare it to a scenario in which these influences had been absent – but it certainly hasn’t transformed the agency attitudes to active modes.

      Culture change starts from the top, or at least near the top, where some people with will and skill modify their organisation, pulling along and energising those who see the benefits. The successes that stem from that “bureaucratic” change then give politicians cover to support change too. We are sorely lacking that across our whole system. Maybe I am tired after a decade and a half of halfway wins and many losses in terms of active mode and PT, but I am not optimistic for the next couple years.

      1. “are also either from places like the UK or other areas of Europe or Asia”

        I forgot to say “OR have worked there”. You can’t throw a bouncing ball across an Auckland engineering office without touching a few people who worked in a London engineering office 😉

      2. OK, let me rephrase. We can probably come up with root causes and actions we could take locally, for sure. But is there an organisation that isn’t tainted by years of failure that could present them in a way that doesn’t energise the talkback base against anything that isn’t a traffic lane?

        Even if it a dog and pony show, flying in some central Asian traffic engineers and getting a total audit of our transport issues and potential fixes with a price tag as an exercise outside of WK/NZTA would be much harder for Brown, Hooten et al to decry as part of a globalist agenda to get people out of cars, or whatever passes for discourse these days. You’d end up with self-professed engineer Brown trying to argue credentials with people who pride themselves on trains and transport services showing up within seconds of their scheduled arrival time.

        1. “would be much harder for Brown, Hooten et al to decry as part of a globalist agenda”

          We had a massive audit of AT’s safety failings a few years ago. Literally calling out how AT’s lack of proper design and prioritising was KILLING Aucklanders. How many of the recommendations were actually followed?

          And sorry, it’s naive that Brown, Hooten et al would not have a FIELD DAY in decrying “some bloody foreigners telling us how to do things” to their benefit. In fact, pointing at “they do it better than we do overseas” is extremely fraught as a way of improving things.

          As a white guy immigrant, the only time in 15 years of living in NZ I ever was told “go back home!” was when I mentioned in an IPENZ meeting 12 or so years ago that they did cycling better in Europe. One of my “peers” (probably another white guy) sitting behind me audibly told me that – if I didn’t like it, I could leave.

          Using foreign expertise is useful. But it’s not a way of getting culture change. That needs to come locally. Maybe one can use envy (they have it better than we do, why don’t we try and make things as good as they have it…?) but it’s a tightrope walk.

        2. It’s probably no less naive than assuming after years of failure – as you point out – that thinking local thinking is the key to getting out of a mess that purely local thinking got us into, and continues to double down on as it slowly makes it worse, not better.

          I think getting hung up about where the solution comes from is probably a recipe for more of the same. I don’t think there would be the same push-back if that solution came from somewhere outside of Europe. I know it’s dumb as hell, but none of these knee-jerk responses you get are well thought through either. And I guess it comes down to whether you want the problem solved or whether you are prepared to wait until it solves itself a certain way, knowing that may well not happen in the foreseeable future.

  4. But what do you expect AT to actually [b]do[/b]?

    The problem with this absolute bucket of negativity on all public transport in Auckland – no matter how richly deserved – is that it just plays into the hands of Wayne Brown and Matthew Hooton. “Everyone knows buses and trains suck. Then why are we funding them? Let’s just build bigger roads so people can drive easier and not have to deal with awful buses and trains”. Our side are coming up with no positive proposals. Just contempt, nasty satire, negativity, and despair.

    1. Well, should we just shrug and accept it? Calling out an issue is important. The public KNOWS public transport sucks. Giving numbers to it helps ensure the people responsible cannot obfuscate the facts with pretty language.

      And this blog in my view has suggested numerous improvements to PT and PT conditions. If this is not the main focus of this single blog then that isn’t exactly the issue.

      Fund PT opex better. Pay drivers more. Paint more bus lanes.

      1. What I’m getting at is that this blog seems to lack what the Green Party internal debates call a “theory of change”. The model of this blog – make sensible, evidence-based explanations of the issues – worked well when sensible persons ran the council under Goff and under L. Brown.

        Under W. Brown, this blog’s approach has no reward at all, because the Mayor and the council majority DON´T CARE – in fact, as I say, they *like* malfunctioning PT because they want to close it down/sell it off. So the approach you suggest just makes the powers-that-be chuckle and say “Good”, because they *want* people to give up and lose faith in public transport.

        This blog has no answer to a political leadership who *wants* PT to fail and be a disaster.

        1. “This blog has no answer to a political leadership who *wants* PT to fail and be a disaster.”

          Is that this blog’s function? I don’t think, ultimately, it is realistic to expect a blog to change an individual’s position.

          This blog does a lot of articles about WHY and HOW to make PT better, and all the benefits that brings. I think the key benefit of a blog like this is to convince interested fence sitters, professionals etc – and give actual politicians and journalists facts, talking points and narratives that need to be questioned in their own work.

        2. Daphne, I think the same is true of most advocates, politicians, consultants and bureaucrats who do want quality transport and planning outcomes. The complexity of the problem has most people keeping their eyes on what incremental bit they feel they can work on. GA keeps providing insights over a wide range of issues to help all these groups.

          We’re not going to avert a terrible doom loop for the city unless we do coordinate and find an effective theory of change. So you’re right to be questioning (I just wouldn’t start by criticising GA). All Aboard have been refining a theory of change – perhaps we should touch base. It will have to involve overhauling governance, bringing that up to the year 2023, and capable of serving the transition to a more equitable and sustainable society.

    2. For all his absolute failings and there many, I don’t partcularly think Wayne Brown has or is proposing more and more roads. He’s only really here to sell off some assets and try and get the Port moved as he has been trying for the past 10 years.

      The Government should have stepped in, even on an interim basis and done more than just lift driver pay. It would be a crisis in any other Countries primary city and as such should be treated like one.

      1. You don’t think Wayne Brown is in favour of more roads where they would serve greenfields developments?

    3. This is a job for a Mr Fix-it, if there was one. Instead there’s only a Mr Defund-it.

      PT, especially buses, are the Council’s core business and under their control. Sure central govt both directly and through Waka Kotahi help fund, and control key legislation (esp minimum wage and migration settings), but without local govt leadership and, most importantly, their share of funding, there’s little they can do short of taking PT of the local authority. Which is unlikely.

      This is all on mayor and council’s head. They are defunding AT. Which is doubly costly cos the system works by Waka Kotahi matching local funds on operating costs (eg driver wages, bus frequency etc). Therefore every $10m council cuts from AT PT operating budget is actually a $20m cut in services and lost to local economy.

      Just like the Inner West street upgrades this Mayor and council claim to be saving money, but in practice they are impoverishing Auckland by turning down matching central government funds.

      Don’t worry, there are plenty of other councils around the country that will snap up this govt money that our council is rejecting from Wellington. We cannot become better off by not investing locally.

      This is austerity, not efficiency or chasing value for money. Austerity is intentional improverishment, a strange incoherent economic ideology that sees no value, only expense, that never works out well for any community. The UK is clear proof of this (including its history of intentional destruction of bus services outside of London).

      Please fix this, mayor and council; it is your job and you can choose it.

  5. I haven’t noticed many bus cancellation out here in the South although there are too many train ones. Over the last couple of months I have being pleased to note increased patronage on both the buses and trains including the Airport link services. One morning the service from Manukau to the airport was fill when it left the bus station with passengers who arrived on Intercity bus services but also good numbers transferring to and from rail. And another positive, track has being laid on the third main last weekend between Papatoetoe and Middlemore. I am still concerned about confused out of town travellers at the airport and Puhinui especially when rail replacement buses replace trains. In my view the AT staff behind the glass or maybe security staff needs to meet every bus as it arrives at the Puhinui interchange at the bus stop to direct passengers to their destination. Not so much if trains are running but definetly if there not.

    1. The AT staff and security must be prime candidates for redundancy once the Wayne Brown/Maurice Williamson “line by line” cost cutting review gets underway.

  6. Big presumption here on my part – but will type it out.

    I’m presuming the bus users on a Sunday don’t really have an alternative – congestion isn’t normally a factor in deciding to use PT or drive. Often parking is free or reduced on weekends so that may or may not have a factor on using PT or driving.
    Sad to see the overwhelming majority of cancelled services occuring on Sunday’s, yes ridership is lower, but also – when frequencies are lower, and likely (IMO) those without a choice are either waiting longer.

  7. Why are we still using uneconomical big buses? Why are we not investing in 20 seater or vans that are hop on hop off and flexible to meet the needs of commuters! What continue to build bus lanes when trains/ light rail will better serve the communities and ecology in future

    1. Hong Kong works on that basis – hundreds of small mini-bus – Hino or Toyota HiAce – which flock around the subway stations on the MTR. People get off the MTR, wait about 2 minutes, and get on a mini-bus – with a fresh minibus arriving every minute.

      The key difference there, obviously, is that wages for the drivers are very much less, and no shortage of drivers, as there is no unemployment benefit in Hong Kong – you work, or you die. Amazing how that focuses the minds of people who may not want a job.

    2. Small buses ARE uneconomical except for low numbers of passengers. They need more drivers for the same number of people. Labour costs are the biggest cost of PT.

      So unless you expect PT user numbers to stay low forever, you need big buses. Or a fleet twice the size (big ones AND small ones) and drivers use different ones for peak and off-peak. Which of course will mean having to maintain and buy twice as many buses. Not realistic.

      As for the comments of bus lanes VS light rail / trains. Ummmm, do you know how few areas of Auckland actually have trains nearby (800m or less)? It’s a tiny part. Bus lanes are cheap. We just don’t have the institutional or political will.

  8. I wonder if anyone could explain how come the North Shore is mainly the worst area for Bus Cancelations? Genuine question. Is it because AT are deliberately saying “Let’s cancel buses on the North Shore because they matter less?” or is it more something along the line of “the drivers that used to drive on the Shore have not returned post-covid?” or do drivers have some say in it, and that they would prefer to drive on the central AK side, and dislike driving on the Shore?

    It seems to be statistically significant, as the Shore is noticeably more yellow than the blue on the lines elsewhere? Any ideas why?

    1. The North shore had a lot of older drivers before covid. They all had housing from decades ago when it was actuallly affordable. New drivers struggle to afford anything near the bus depots.

    2. If you click through to the article on RNZ which shows the number of services by area before the Oct 2022 reduction in services, you’ll see that after central, north Auckland is the area with the highest number of bus services. That’s likely why they’ve seen the highest number of cuts – they had significantly more services to begin with. I live in west and we have less than half the number of bus services that north has. We also don’t have the double decker buses which north has so the buses we do have carry less passengers.

  9. Just shows how the North Shore continues to pay for a lack of a heavy or light rail network. Again all efforts must be focussed on Electrifying first Public Transport, then furthering bike infrastructure, then dismantling the motorway network, or using it to run light rail, perhaps an economic midterm solution?

    1. Maybe they they can switch with the eastern line and feel true NZ heavy rail performance. A 10 month complete system outage, following a month or so last year, all to get the same performance you’ve had for 10 years (ie zero actual system improvements), to make you appreciate half the busway buses being cancelled so you only have 3 minute frequencies.

  10. Fiona, make the article personal.

    AT say 1000 cancellations per day which don’t include full busses that can’t pick up passengers, to passenger that is a ‘cancelled’ is they could not get a ride.
    A full bus can hold 55 passengers .
    To get the point across .
    ITS over 55,000 people per day that are late to work / miss appointment/ majorly unconvinced.
    Now that is the point !

  11. Simple solutions.

    There are over 100,000 unemployed people in NZ. Train more people to be bus drivers and pay them well to do a good customer service job. Airline pilots (glorified bus drivers) earn over $120,000 pa. Ordinary bus drivers doing a life-in-their-hands job ought to be earning more than $55,000 pa. Bus passengers need to up their game and pay the drivers properly.

    As for Wayne Brown saving $ 25 million of ratepayers’ and car drivers’ money – good job. There are 400,000 regular bus passengers in Auckland they will only have to pay an extra $1.20 each a week (less than a litre of petrol) to cover this $25mill. If they whinge about this they will whinge about anything/everything.

  12. Bus will be needed forever siding along SH1 in the long term future since likes of bus 83 as prime example. For a long time now contributing factors to why residents in the Bay Area of the North Shore don’t want to change to PT, is the journey time, indirect route for work, terrain if walking to nearest station (especially if it’s summer) and accessibility. A rail line running through Bay Area of the North Shore would solve all these problems! Along with it is the roading issue which as been issue for decades! It is very much needed instead of ‘second feeder mode’ of transport running along side the current busway which would create a bottleneck more plaguing issues in future, its needs thought through right, having a A rail line running through Bay Area of the North Shore would be more beneficial economically and community stand-point.

    Once upon a time, the bay areas of the North Shore had direct public transport to the city such as 839, 858, 875 and 879 every day of the week, during peak day and hours you had the ‘express buses’ running through the suburbs and running on the Northern Busway, without the need of transferring, now you have indirect buses during peak hours take you longer to get into the city or into Takapuna. Waiting at stations increases your travel time whereas direct route would bring relief to those stuck in the bay areas who want direct way of getting into the city by Public Transport!

    There are a lot of benefits in bringing in a rail line into the Bay Area of the North Shore. It would indefinitely solve the Everyone on the North Shore’s Bay Area always having to end up taking a second bus to the city while people who live closer to the Northern Busway or places like Takapuna, Birkenhead, Beach Haven, Hillcrest and Glenfield have a ‘direct’ bus route to the city while us people along the bays don’t and find it unappealing to take the bus due to the long duration journey, which affects ability to have balanced life. Also sometimes not able to board for 30 mins at the stations like Constellation or Albany Station which can disrupt your work and outside of work life.

    Not only that, it would also solve our ferry development issues, with rail we wouldn’t need a ferry, be no longer in North Shore plans, in-which ferry has been long outstanding issue for long time now and doesn’t seem like the development of ferry terminals along the bays is going to happen, ever! A rail line running through the townships would be solutions to the ferry problem, you wouldn’t need to build ferry terminal no longer!

    Just as of this week, RNZ (Radio New Zealand) revealed ‘Auckland Most Cancelled Bus Route’, not be surprised, all the most cancelled bus routes happens to be on the North Shore. Another reason why Bay Area of the North Shore needs a rail line running through so it doesn’t impact commuters heavily. If there was a rail line running through the townships right now it would minimise the issue since people can walk, bike or dropped off, wouldn’t need to use second bus.

    https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/in-depth/487286/auckland-s-most-cancelled-bus-routes

    The listed reason above this writing shows why need desperately need immediate changes sooner rather than later! That is why we need to have a line running through the Bay Area of the North Shore and call it the ‘Bay line’ and Minister of Transport should pick Option 3 ,along with it, have stage one run towards Milford. The line would be set in stages, stage one, stage two, stage three and finally stage four.

    Stage One:
    CBD to Milford

    https://twitter.com/NZTransportUser/status/1644398116899295232?s=20

    Stage Two:
    Milford to Mairangi Bay

    https://twitter.com/NZTransportUser/status/1644383383638929409?s=20

    Stage Three:
    Mairangi Bay to Browns Bay

    https://twitter.com/NZTransportUser/status/1644385413761748992?s=20

    https://twitter.com/NZTransportUser/status/1644386159819374593?s=20

    Stage Four:
    Browns Bay to Long Bay

    https://twitter.com/NZTransportUser/status/1644385413761748992?s=20

  13. Once upon a time, the bay areas of the North Shore had direct public transport to the city such as 839, 858, 875 and 879 every day of the week, during peak day and hours you had the ‘express buses’ running through the suburbs and running on the Northern Busway, without the need of transferring, now you have indirect buses during peak hours take you longer to get into the city or into Takapuna. Waiting at stations increases your travel time whereas direct route would bring relief to those stuck in the bay areas who want direct way of getting into the city by Public Transport!

    There are a lot of benefits in bringing in a rail line into the Bay Area of the North Shore. It would indefinitely solve the Everyone on the North Shore’s Bay Area always having to end up taking a second bus to the city while people who live closer to the Northern Busway or places like Takapuna, Birkenhead, Beach Haven, Hillcrest and Glenfield have a ‘direct’ bus route to the city while us people along the bays don’t and find it unappealing to take the bus due to the long duration journey, which affects ability to have balanced life. Also sometimes not able to board for 30 mins at the stations like Constellation or Albany Station which can disrupt your work and outside of work life

    For a long time now contributing factors to why residents in the Bay Area of the North Shore don’t want to change to PT, is the journey time, indirect route for work, terrain if walking to nearest station (especially if it’s summer) and accessibility. A rail line running through Bay Area of the North Shore would solve all these problems! Along with it is the roading issue which as been issue for decades! It is very much needed instead of ‘second feeder mode’ of transport running along side the current busway which would create a bottleneck more plaguing issues in future, its needs thought through right, having a A rail line running through Bay Area of the North Shore would be more beneficial economically and community stand-point.

  14. I have given up with public transport and bought a car.

    I have received two warnings about being late to work due to bus cancellations and a third warning would have been a last and final warning before I would have lost my job. Being at the mercy of an unreliable bus system that may have cost my job was also affecting my mental health. The day I gave up on buses was when the fourth bus went past my stop without stopping and I had to take an uber into work.

    I did not want to buy a car and never needed one in Prague before I came to live here but unfortunately I felt like I had no choice. Now I sit in the car in traffic jams for 2 hours a day but at least I know that I am in control and I can get to work.

    Unfortunately my sister also came to NZ recently and she had the same problem but not with buses rather with trains. She tells me that they are digging the whole bed underneath the tracks and her line will be down for 7 months. She has now brought a car as well.

    Not very sustainable NZ but the public transport was such as disaster that we felt we had no other option. Very unfortunate.

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