Campaign pledge by Regional People: Publicly owned bus company for Auckland
Shale Chambers, Regional People candidate for the Auckland Regional Council announced at a Regional People ‘town meeting' held in Onehunga today that if elected he would propose, and fellow candidate, Dr Ian Scott would second, a notice of motion at "the earliest opportunity" that the ARC take steps to set up a publicly-owned bus company.
Mr Chambers, a commercial lawyer who is an elected member of the Auckland Energy Consumer Trust and a board member of Vector Ltd said he was appalled at the huge amount of ratepayers money spent in providing the existing service; at an almost 90% increase in ratepayer subsidies since 2004 for a patronage increase of around 1.2%.
"There is a clear lack of competition and it seems privately owned bus companies have been given no incentive to grow patronage. The costs of ratepayer taxpayer subsidies are not sustainable or affordable for ratepayers in the long term", Mr Chambers said.
This Regional People statement follows comments made by the chairman of the Auckland Regional Council Mike Lee and leader of the Regional People ticket for the ARC last week to "investigate" a publicly-owned bus company for Auckland.
Mr Chambers said he and his fellow Regional People candidates were looking to the publicly-owned Christchurch City Red Bus company for inspiration. There ratepayer subsidy per trip were 0.84 cents as opposed to Auckland's $1.51 and rising.
Auckland last had a publicly owned bus company (the Yellow Bus Company) in 1998 when the Shipley government ordered the Auckland Regional Services Trust (ARST) to privatise. The Yellow Bus Company was sold to the British bus company Stagecoach. Since that time all bus services in Auckland have been privately owned and operated but increasingly ratepayer funded.
The history of publicly-owned public transport in Auckland goes back to 1917 when tramways were taken over by the Auckland City Council. In 1925 the Auckland Transport Board assumed responsibility for both tramways and buses. In 1955 the year before trams were withdrawn the Auckland Transport Board with NZ Rail, carried over 100 million passengers per year. The withdrawal of trams led to a sharp decline in patronage. In 1964 Transport Board buses were taken over by the Auckland Regional Authority which built up patronage to 61 million in 1984.
Today despite enormously increased subsidies from $45 million in 2004 to $85.1 million and a growing population, public transport patronage is "flatlining" at only 52 million passenger trips per year. Mr Chambers identified the growing popularity of rail as the likely chief cause of the poor performance in bus patronage. "Buses have to stop competing with trains and work in cooperation," he said.
Mr Chambers said the Auckland Regional Bus company should be owned on behalf of the ARC by its asset holding subsidiary, Auckland Regional Holdings. This would enable the Auckland Regional Bus bus company to be deployed to ensure genuine competition on contract tenders to provide to the big privately owned operators and to provide better transparency.
Regional People is the public ownership ticket for the ARC and is running candidates in Auckland, Shale Chambers, Maire Leadbeater, Mike Lee and Dr Ian Scott and in Manukau, Steve Bayliss and Lindsey Britton.
For further information contact:
Shale Chambers
Ph: 378 6662
Mob: 0274 765 284
Mike Lee
Ph: 366 2045
Mob: 0274 943 198
Posted Tue 18 Sep 2007
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