Wellington bus bugbears

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#2062773 26-Jul-2018 09:18

Not sure I ever experienced this before, but apparently express buses now pick up people again once they get to town?

Seems much less express...

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lchiu7

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#2069893 8-Aug-2018 13:59

Looks like they might be rethinking parts of the timetable

https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/106038159/Wellingtons-faltering-new-bus-network-gets-rethink-after-just-three-weeks

And the trolley buses might be coming back by the end of the year as promised earlier

https://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/363571/wellington-s-trolley-buses-get-new-lease-of-life

One of the main issues I find with the new diesel buses are they are much smaller than the previous ones, have reduced standing space (you can't stand at the bank where there is a step up) and the seat squabs are much thinner :-)

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freitasm

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#2070011 8-Aug-2018 14:29

Metlink removed one trip from the 1 Johnsonville West route in the morning rush - as a results buses are now more overloaded than ever. Interesting though is that they put those double-decker buses to run that router at off peak times but in the mornings there isn't any doing the rounds on that route.

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#2070049 8-Aug-2018 14:32

lchiu7:

Looks like they might be rethinking parts of the timetable

https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/106038159/Wellingtons-faltering-new-bus-network-gets-rethink-after-just-three-weeks

From the article: Greater Wellington Regional Council sustainable transport committee chairperson Barbara Donaldson says "panicking is not helpful".

Well, duh. No one is panicking. People are complaining of terrible service. Big difference.

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elpenguino

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#2070076 8-Aug-2018 15:19

She's saying the council shouldn't panic.

The easiest thing to do right now is cancel all the changes and make it like it was.

Most of the posters in this thread are just like chimpanzees on MDMA, full of feelings of bonhomie, joy, and optimism. Fred99 8/4/21

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#2070079 8-Aug-2018 15:24

elpenguino:

She's saying the council shouldn't panic.

The easiest thing to do right now is cancel all the changes and make it like it was.

yeah, but the problem is that unless the Regional Council expresses some sympathy and can convince the public that they are actually working on ways of solving the problems, it just comes across as a big "Nothing to see here" "move along"....

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#2070080 8-Aug-2018 15:25

elpenguino:

She's saying the council shouldn't panic.

The easiest thing to do right now is cancel all the changes and make it like it was.

They can't.

They have two operators in Wellington who have entered into contracts to run particular routes with conditions around all of those routes including bus sizes and frequency.

Changing it back to "how it was" or even making minor changes could well require additional buses or drivers and be completely outside the scope of their contract which will need to be renegotiated.

elpenguino

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#2070129 8-Aug-2018 16:14

sbiddle:

elpenguino:

She's saying the council shouldn't panic.

The easiest thing to do right now is cancel all the changes and make it like it was.

They can't.

They have two operators in Wellington who have entered into contracts to run particular routes with conditions around all of those routes including bus sizes and frequency.

Changing it back to "how it was" or even making minor changes could well require additional buses or drivers and be completely outside the scope of their contract which will need to be renegotiated.

Don't get me wrong, I wasn't suggesting they undo what has been done.

They need to make some coffee, sit down and look at the big picture and debug the situation. That's not panicking. It's also not dramatic enough to soothe your customers.

Most of the posters in this thread are just like chimpanzees on MDMA, full of feelings of bonhomie, joy, and optimism. Fred99 8/4/21

wellygary

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#2070135 8-Aug-2018 16:22

elpenguino:

They need to make some coffee, sit down and look at the big picture and debug the situation. That's not panicking. It's also not dramatic enough to soothe your customers.

The problem they have is that they have almost no capacity to increase either the capacity of the buses - ( the new fleet is what it is,)

or the frequency (there are not screeds of spare buses and drivers just sitting around twiddling their thumbs)

In the short term , short of ripping out seats and making more people stand there is not much that can be done

Apparently NZBus's capacity is contracted to increase in December, but until then I get the feeling they will try to tough it out

elpenguino

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#2070140 8-Aug-2018 16:29

wellygary:

elpenguino:

They need to make some coffee, sit down and look at the big picture and debug the situation. That's not panicking. It's also not dramatic enough to soothe your customers.

The problem they have is that they have almost no capacity to increase either the capacity of the buses - ( the new fleet is what it is,)

or the frequency

The devil's in the detail though isn't it. What they could do is reduce some route frequencies to increase others or change routes to reduce journey times.

There's plenty of scope for tweaking.

Most of the posters in this thread are just like chimpanzees on MDMA, full of feelings of bonhomie, joy, and optimism. Fred99 8/4/21

allan

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#2070143 8-Aug-2018 16:34

Karori has a fairly active local Facebook group, which has many "bus" threads going. There has been some response from a GWRC Councillor suggesting that NZ Bus are not running the contracted peak-time buses on the No 2 route in particular. Apparently should be running buses capable of carrying 81 people, but only using buses capable of carrying 56 people. There is a local meeting, convened by the "Karori Association" scheduled for 30 August which GWRC and Metlink will be attending.

Edited to fix typo (isn't that always the way...)

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sbiddle

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#2070152 8-Aug-2018 16:51

NZ Bus are getting a number of new buses which are still some time away.

With NZ Bus pretty much ready shut up shop I guess anything could happen in the coming months especially if somebody else buys their contract.

KiwiSurfer

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#2070156 8-Aug-2018 17:11

Given that NZ Bus lost a whole lot of routes during the bus tender process in Auckland, I'm surprised they have no surplus buses to put into service in Wellington in the interim while they get new buses. They pretty much lost 90% of their South Auckland services which was a big part of their operations as well as reduced services pretty much everywhere else (with the sole exception of central suburbs where they have more or less maintained historic service levels).

I was in Wellington last week and had the privilege(!) of travelling on one of Tranzit's new buses. I was surprised to find it had no USB chargers—a feature that came with the new buses operated by the new operators in Auckland (e.g. Go Bus and the Ritchies-Murphys joint venture). Otherwise I did not have much to complain about. Interestingly the bus wasn't very full but it was not a core route I think (route 48 or something like that).

Not a great time to be a bus operator and given the difficulties it is to maintain a healthy market of bus companies who can contract to regional councils, I am even more convinced that the only way to operate a decent service in the long run is for the councils to own and operate the services themselves (or operate a mixed model where they operate core services and sub-contact only the less frequent routes).

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#2070166 8-Aug-2018 18:03

While I agree council owned enterprise to deliver bus services has great potential but I fear a typical council cost plus management attitude and poltical interference to provide uneconomic services.

At least tendering the service allows benchmarking of costs.

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#2070169 8-Aug-2018 18:26

KiwiSurfer: Given that NZ Bus lost a whole lot of routes during the bus tender process in Auckland, I'm surprised they have no surplus buses to put into service in Wellington in the interim while they get new buses. .

This is exactly what's happening. Mana/Newlands(who now pretty much don't exist after the change) and NZ Bus have been running a huge number of ex Auckland buses in Wellington for months.

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