Auckland’s deputy mayor has advised Auckland Transport to take action amid a wave of complaints regarding school students being left stranded at bus stops due to overcrowded, overheated buses labelled a “safety hazard”.
Parents have expressed concerns as their children are forced to find their own way to school after school buses, packed full of students, drive straight past them without stopping.
The city-wide issue has seen parents receive phone calls from distraught kids and in some cases resulted in parents having to leave their workplaces to transport multiple children to school.
Deputy mayor Desley Simpson said she had received reports students in her Orakei Ward were being left at their bus stops, without a way to school due to the overcrowded buses.
“If that happens and that was your kid, what would you do? You just go “Right, that’s it, I want my kids to get to school so I’ll just take them”, so it’s important to get it right,” she said.
Simpson said Auckland Transport (AT) had been undertaking “daily capacity reviews” of the network, saying that it was important to get school bus issues sorted before “March madness”, when University students add extra capacity.
“The best option for Auckland is that as many kids as possible that want to can catch a bus to school. The more that we can take advantage of public transport the better.”
The reports emerged after AT came under fire from parents of North Shore school students after an overcrowded school bus service, lacking air conditioning, was labelled a “major concern and safety hazard”.
One concerned mother told the Herald about 40 kids were forced to stand on the buses, after all seats were occupied, with no air conditioning, while they drove along State Highway 1 from the Hibiscus Coast to schools on Auckland’s North Shore.
“I just think that’s extremely dangerous,” she said.
Video obtained by the Herald showed some students having to stand on top of seat backs, while holding on to handrails, with no extra room to stand on the floor of the overcrowded bus.
The deputy mayor said she had asked AT to contact schools where capacity issues had been reported.
“They’re having a look to provide a detailed list of all available services within the school zone, including school buses as well as scheduled public urban services.”
AT’s director of public transport, Stacey van der Putten, told the Herald the issues were not being picked up proactively due to data not showing the buses in question as full as a result of students failing to tag on with their AT HOP cards.
“I’d rather be responding proactively based on data than through complaints, because that helps everybody to get to where they need to be safely.”
She identified six school bus services over-capacity on Monday last week alone.
Van der Putten said AT had been working on contacting schools most affected by overcrowded services and providing more “travel planning” details and relaying advice for students.
“There’s a number [of solutions] and one of the most important is actually working with the school and providing a full list in terms of details of particular routes that students can travel on. It’s not necessarily just dedicated school buses and sometimes that message does not get through.”
She said identified schools that AT had been in contact with included Selwyn College, Rangitoto College, Long Bay College, Westlake schools, Carmel College and Takapuna Normal Intermediate.
A parent of one Selwyn College student told the Herald they were forced to leave their workplace in Manukau and return to a bus stop in St Johns in rush-hour traffic to take their kid to school.
When asked if there were not enough bus drivers to combat the issues, van der Putten said AT had maximum deployment of fleet and people before the school day began.
“But some of these operators, depending on where they are, do have buses and drivers available, so we’re working with them in order to deploy to the right spots.”
Van der Putten said AT had seen a large pick up in commuters over the past week, with bus patronage increased 100 per cent compared to 2019, pre Covid-19.
“This time of year when schools commence we always get a bubble of demand and that is due to students starting school or changing schools. The demand is there so being able to be flexible is important”.
Van der Putten said both Hibiscus Coast and St Johns had been identified as areas with significant problems regarding overcrowded services and AT had sent transport officers to those zones “to help funnel students onto different services and make sure they can get to where they need to be”.
She added AT would be looking to supplement services over the coming weeks where a “continued over-consumption of capacity” was observed.
Every bus on the network had a ‘legal compliance loading’ made up of seating and standing capacity and drivers were left to make a decision on when buses were at capacity.
“Usually that standing capacity is probably half of the seated capacity again”.
She added people tended to start standing when buses were 80 per cent full so it’s “actually really hard” for a driver to get an accurate representation of their load when they can’t see.
“Their core job, of course, is making sure people get to their destination safely so it becomes really challenging when they can’t see what the loading on their bus looks like.”
Van der Putten said it “absolutely” concerned them to hear of overcrowded school buses, but encouraged feedback from parents and instructed school children to tag on/off so AT’s response could be more proactive.
“But also be prepared that it is going to be busy. It’s a proper busy year this year and we haven’t had one for a while and our muscle memory on what busy looks like has changed I think and so we are being as agile as we practically can within our constraints,” she said.
Simpson said developing good public transport habits now was important because if the problems were ongoing, parents would revert to taking the children to school, which would add to Auckland’s traffic congestion issues.
“It is a problem. We had such an issue last year around not having enough bus drivers and we’ve solved that problem, but now we need to get the routes and the loadings and everything correct.”
She urged students to tag on/off with their AT Hop cards to give AT the evidence that buses are overcrowded.
“That provides the basis of the information used to ascertain the loadings and identify the capacity issues. They [AT] know it’s an issue and they want to get onto it, but they need the data,” said Simpson.
Benjamin Plummer is an Auckland-based reporter who covers breaking news. He has worked for the Herald since 2022.