Public Transport

Last year the Hawkes Bay Regional Council awarded the urban Bus contract to “Go Bus”, dropping long time provider Nimons who had been running services for close to a hundred years.

While urban bus services are not profitable as stand alone operations, they are made attractive to operators with ratepayer subsidies. These subsidies remove much of the risk faced other by other providers such as taxi's. The money has to come from somewhere and that somewhere is you. Take a look at your Regional Council Rates demand and you will find exactly what you are being charged whether or not, you are a bus user. Additionally Government provides some financial support.

A hundred years or so, few people owned their own transport.

For most mobility was greatly enhanced with the arrival of the railways from the 1880's, followed by electric trams after 1900.

Yes, the first cars were becoming available around the same time, but it was not until the 1950's and 1960's that growing incomes made then affordable to most people.

Private cars offered unrestrained travel and freedom of where to go, and when, and where to live and work.

They also filled the streets with traffic and parked cars.

Eventually the authorities realised the futility of building more and more new roads, bridges, motorways and parking buildings and started to encourage people to use public transport.

Some major cities such as London, New York, Tokyo, and others could not function without mass transport systems. Of course public transport existed well before the arrival of private cars so the travelling and living patterns of the inhabitants developed around the transport system not the other way around.

Wellington is the only city in this country with an effective urban rail system. There, about a quarter of commuters use public transport, compared with just four percent of people traveling into Auckland's CBD, and only one percent in Christchurch. It probably helps that a large number of public servants with their nine to five work ethic, and down town work places provides the numbers and concentration of traffic needed.

To some extent it was just luck that the rail tracks built in the 1880's were still there in the 1940's when the system was electrified. Significantly there has been little improvement in 70 years.

Public transport is clearly loosing out to the private motor vehicle everywhere in New Zealand including Hawke's Bay. This in spite of massive subsidies for public transport funded from taxes, rates, and private motorists.

In Hawke's Bay we have little history of using public transport. Low density urban expansion and widely spread employment generally prevents the concentrations of passengers needed for an effective public transport system.

Schools, the EIT and the hospital do provide the necessary hubs to concentrate traffic so these are the exceptions.

So in spite of the hype pumped out by the Regional Council the reality is urban bus services in Hawke's Bay are failing to attract good passenger loadings and this is supported by general observation of empty and near empty buses.

For the second quarter of 2009 total bus patronage was 110 000 passengers. Fully 85% were travelling free or on some sort of concession and over half were children or students.

Only 15%, or 16 500 trips were full fare paying adults. Sounds a lot but divided over the 65 work days this averages 254 trips a day. Now allowing for each person traveling both from home, then back, this represents only 127 people a day, an absolute minuscule fraction of the over 50 000 people estimated to work in Hawkes Bay each day.

Even this over states bus usage, because not all of these trips are traveling to work, and some must be using weekend services.

So the many are paying for just a few to have an almost personal transport service.

While buses to Flaxmere, the hospital and the EIT do appear quite well supported, by far the majority of services are not.

Remember these buses are costing you the ratepayer over a million dollars a year so ratepayers have a right to question the purpose of the service, how the routes and frequency are decided, and how much it should cost.

The reasoning behind urban transport lacks rationale. My guess is the last Government imposed it on the Regional Council who are more than happy to expand their empire.

Pressure from just a a few individuals may have convinced council that the community is demanding such a service but few of these people ever seem to catch the bus themselves.

While on the surface subsidised urban transport seems like a good idea because in theory it removes vehicles from the roads in reality it can be wasteful because it encourages people to live further from their work place than they might otherwise do, shifting the cost of getting to work onto others.

Only by imposing onerous penalties for car drivers such as tolls, congestion, and parking charges plus massive subsidies can people be shifted out of their cars. Hardly surprising considering the inconvenience and unhealthy atmosphere experienced with public transport.

Those who drive to work face the full cost. There is also the issue of fairness. Clive gets a service. Haumoana, and Te Awanga do not, nor do Waipukarau, Waipawa or Wairoa.

Now I believe we do need buses, but we need to drop the myth we are getting cars off the road. In Hawke's Bay buses are mainly a social service for those who don't have access to private motor vehicles.

Rational thinking must prevail. Subsidies promote waste.

If particular services are not supported by a reasonable numbers of people, then they should be discontinued. The Regional Council does not have a mandate to waste ratepayers money in pursuit of unrealistic sustainability aims.