Opinion: Bringing transport assets under local control

Penny Gaylor.

Weekly column by Kāpiti's Greater Wellington Regional Council representative Penny Gaylor.

While the protection and restoration of the environment is at the heart of the Wellington Regional Council's business, as you'll know public transport is a huge chunk of our focus, and it is certainly a massive chunk of our annual budget.

So how Government, and its central government legislation, structures the parameters and requirements of public transport is not only of huge interest to us at regional council, it's also of significant consequence.

Hence why GWRC has submitted to Government asking for the current public transport framework to be significantly changed.

And I want to give you a heads up about what our thinking is at regional council.

Our submission has urged significant changes to the Public Transport Operating Model (PTOM) to bring transport assets under the control of regional councils to create greater certainty in delivering quality public transport services.

The chair of GWRC, councillor Daran Ponter, put it like this, "We strongly hold that, for regional councils to be truly strategic in planning and providing world-class public transport, we need to have stronger control of critical infrastructure such as buses, depots and charging infrastructure.

"We are asking for the ability to own or control our assets to ensure we have this option available to us when we make investment decisions.

"Owning, or at least controlling, these assets is key to minimising the risks to delivering public transport, which have been plainly evident in the Wellington region as a combination of industrial action and driver shortages has hampered service provision.

"We are looking for a strong signal from the Government that it will back regional council ownership and allow the sector to re-set public transport.

"We want to strengthen our communities' confidence and pride in our public transport, which will only come with us re-setting some of the underlying frameworks and we want to work closely with the Government on a funding model that will lead to that outcome."

We're asserting that a change to the ownership of public transport assets would provide a range of benefits, such as us having more influence in employee terms and conditions and workforce planning, and the ability to play a stronger role in ensuring continuity of service delivery.

Having worked under the PTOM regime for some years now, we've come to the realisation that it places all financial risk onto councils, with few associated financial benefits.

So we believe we need a model based on more active ownership by councils of the key public transport infrastructure that would better balance the risk profile for the public good.

The overall outcome would be a stronger, more reliable and more resilient fleet and service.