Gulf Harbour ferry services cancelled due to staff shortages, commuters face two-hour bus trip

Gulf Harbour commuters face a long bus trip to Auckland with the ferry service being reduced. Photo / Dean Purcell

By RNZ

Gulf Harbour ferry commuters are facing even more cancelled ferry trips, leaving some with no option but to spend two hours on a bus if they need to get to town.

The Gulf Harbour ferry is now operating only twice in the morning, and twice in the evening - a decision Auckland Council says was necessary due to a shortage of staff.

Gulf Harbour commuters used to a 50-minute ferry trip could find themselves spending two hours on a replacement bus to get to the same destination, something they were not happy about.

“Definitely it’s an inconvenience, I’m sure, to many people coming into work,” one commuter said.

Auckland Transport has reduced ferries on the Gulf Harbour and Half Moon Bay routes while the operator, Fullers360, trains new staff.

Following mass cancellations of Fullers ferries earlier in the year, then-immigration minister Michael Wood called a crisis meeting with Fullers, Auckland Transport and Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency, to address the staff shortage.

The result was that skippers and deckhands were added to the green list for visas.

Despite that, the problem persisted.

Auckland councillor John Watson said commuters were not happy with the recent reductions.

“They’re really disgusted at the decimation of their service.

“The service has been run down, and the people who have depended upon it, their lives, have been thrown into travel chaos.”

Morning sailings have been reduced to between 7am and 9am to the city, with evening return trips during a two hour slot from 5.15pm until 7.15pm.

Watson said this represented an 83 per cent reduction - although sailings were already regularly cancelled due to staff shortages and weather.

“You have a service, a ferry, that doesn’t turn up more than half the time, and now it’ll be down to 16 per cent of the time that normally is on its timetable.

“If there’s a worse public transport service in New Zealand, I haven’t heard about it.”

In March, Fullers told RNZ it was down 50 staff and it had been working on the problem for 18 months.

Watson said there was a feeling in the community that their service was being deliberately wound down.

“People in the community believe that’s not accidental, that their service has been treated as something of a sacrificial lamb to plug the numerous operational shortcomings elsewhere in the network.”

Hibiscus and Bays Local Board deputy chairwoman Julia Parfitt said the ferry timetable cuts made trips to the city tedious.

“People get frustrated with going here, there, and everywhere, on the way down to Silverdale to the use the park and ride facility there, which can barely cope anyway,” she said.

Parfitt wanted a new ferry operator to take on the Gulf Harbour service, but said bringing one in was easier said than done.

“It appears that this particular service is bundled up in a contract with other services, and to de-couple it is not as easy as it has been for the inner harbour services that looked as if they were going to be impacted severely.”

Auckland Transport has been approached for comment.