Its about our buses
September 1, 2010 1 Comment
Recently we have heard a lot about light rail, as part of a long term public transport vision.
But what we really need to be focusing on NOW, are our buses.
Why?
Because if we continue to send the wrong messages, we are going to end up with even more congestion in our city. And we have certainly been getting a lot of mixed messages from our council.
We need better incentives to use public transport. We need improved flow management and travel times. We don’t need more cars passing though our city, which is exactly what the Cobham Drive Sports Centre development will do.
Take the recent bus fare increases.
For the vast majority of people who use buses to travel to work, they subsribe to the “Monthly” bus pass. And if you are a zone 3 user, that amounts to $99 per month (unlimited travel). A great incentive to use public transport.
Well, from 1 October, the price of a monthly bus ticket increases from $99 to $185.
How? Well, the monthly pass has been terminated and not replaced. So bus users will either have to use the new $185 “Get About” pass or use snapper.
A snapper zone 3 user will pay $3.23 per trip (20% discount on normal fare). If you are travelling twice a day, 7 days a week, for 4 weeks (eg, “monthly”) you will pay around $180.88. And this is not unlimited travel.
For unlimited travel (as per the old monthly pass) you wil need to pay an extra $4 for the $185 “Get About” pass. Which will let you travel outside of zone 3, as far as the Hut Valley.
A price increase of nearly 90%. So much for promoting affordable bus travel in our city.
And has our council made any noise about this? None. Absolutely zip.
We need to be subsidizing our buses, not parties.
We need to be sending the right messages, not mixed messages.
We need change.
http://www.metlink.org.nz/assets/Home-Page/Publications/J0099WRCFares-Leafletweb.pdf, http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/local/4090106/Fare-rises-will-nearly-double-cost-of-monthly-bus-passes
GWC: Since this post the Bus companies have introduced a monthly fare for $135 (a 35% increase from the former $99). Apart from the fact increases were only suppose to be 5%, why was our council not sorting this out before it was made public. Apparently we are told we have a council that can influence central government, but we can’t even influence a bus company. Thank goodness we have an election, because I wonder how motivated they would have been to request a monthly fare, if there wasn’t one. Why do we always have to get angry before there is action. Its why we need change.