Horizons Regional Council’s Rachel Keedwell: New Palmerston North bus service will be faster and more frequent

From next February, 42 new electric buses will join the existing electric bus. This will allow the ageing 26 diesel buses to be retired from service. Photo / Supplied

OPINION:

A faster, more frequent and easier-to-use bus service is on its way to Palmerston North. This is exciting news for a number of reasons.

The existing service is not very easy to use, nor does it get people to places in a timely fashion. It also relies on an older fleet of diesel buses, but all that is going to change in February 2024.

This new service aims for faster, more frequent and more direct routes to get people to where they want to go more quickly. At peak hours, the timetable will be a bus on every route every 15 minutes. With buses running this frequently, you can pretty much ignore the timetable and just turn up to a bus stop.

When you combine this with the mobile app that tracks your bus, you can know whether you need to hurry up or whether you can take your time getting to the stop for the next bus.

The extended times also mean people staying later in town now have a means of getting home, and the half-hourly timetable throughout the weekend offers a realistic option for getting around.

A really exciting feature is that the new bus fleet will be fully electric. There will be 42 electric buses joining the existing electric bus, allowing the ageing 26 diesel buses to be retired from service. This combination of a fully electric fleet and a vastly enhanced and improved timetable means the city can aim for significant reductions in carbon emissions from transport.

Many people mistakenly believe that all we need to do to address climate change is to change the energy source – move from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources – but the issue is bigger than that. What we need is behaviour change to reduce energy consumption, and until we provide a viable alternative to everyone driving a private vehicle, those behaviours will not change.

For the first time, the city will have a bus network that will make travelling around convenient enough for people to consider substituting car trips with bus trips, or even consider getting rid of their cars. This will also help reduce congestion at peak times.

Over the next year we will also see significant upgrades of the infrastructure, such as bus shelters and stops, to make the experience of catching the bus even easier, thanks to the city council’s success in applying for central government climate emissions reductions funding.

I’m really looking forward to February when the new bus service will be rolling out but there is a lot of work to do between now and then. The operator, Tranzit Group, is going to be exceptionally busy over the next 10 months building 42 new buses, the city council will be working on bus stop infrastructure and designing the new central city terminal, and Horizons will be working with all parties to refine the new routes and ensure a smooth transition to the new service.

I will keep you updated on progress and let you know how you can make the most of this new service when it arrives.

Dr Rachel Keedwell is chairwoman of Horizons Regional Council.