KEY POINTS:
Auckland's main bus company is upset at the level of controls over its business which the Government is offering regional councils through legislation tabled in Parliament yesterday.
Transport Minister Annette King says the Public Transport Management Bill will provide tools to regional councils to improve bus and ferry
services, and to give passengers, local and central government, and taxpayers better value for money.
The Government is concerned only 3 per cent of employed people caught buses to work on Census day last year, and Ms King says better public transport is vital to meeting sustainability goals.
Although regional councils can already negotiate standards for subsidised routes, the legislation will extend their controls to services run commercially and without support from the public purse.
Depending on regional passenger transport plans to be developed in consultation with the public and industry participants, these could include anything from the times and frequency of trips to what colours and signs are on buses and ferries.
The legislation will also allow councils to insist low-emission vehicles be used on commercial as well as subsidised services, and be easier for disabled people to use.
Councils will be able require all urban bus companies to accept integrated or seamless tickets, common to rival operators, and to provide commercial information for public transport planning.
The legislation has been welcomed by the Auckland Regional Transport Authority, which is alarmed a 69 per cent leap in subsidies to bus operators over three years has coincided with a decline in patronage of more than 5 per cent.
Authority spokesperson Sharon Hunter said that although it was "not quite the full deal" sought, it would be a big step towards providing more affordable and effective services to meet the needs of Aucklanders.
But she said it remained unclear how soon the authority would be able to take advantage of the legislation.
In signalling the legislation in February, Ms King acknowledged it would not go as far as giving the authority the power to pocket all bus and ferry fares, and then to pay transport operators fees based on passenger numbers, in the way it now manages urban rail services.
She heeded industry concerns in acknowledging that a similar service model for buses and ferries might lead to "some problems" through a potential withdrawal of investment by commercial operators.
But NZ Bus [formerly Stagecoach] director Tim Brown said yesterday that the legislation was more sweeping than the "compromise" proposal foreshadowed by the minister, and would expose transport operators to the risk of losing large chunks of businesses they had built up.
Mr Brown said NZ Bus was "a big supporter of minimum standards", but he was particularly concerned about a provision for regional councils to require companies to register and operate subsidised and commercial services together, as packages.
That could, as an extreme example, force his company to surrender its successful Link operation through central Auckland if it was unprepared to run that as part of a "bundle" of services.
The packaging provision appears to be a response to the Auckland Regional Council's concern at having to raise $6.2 million in extra subsidies from the region and the Government at short notice to keep buses running along routes from which Stagecoach threatened to withdraw in 2005, after deciding they had become unprofitable.
The transport authority could have contracted the services to another company, but it feared that as Stagecoach was already running subsidised buses on the same routes in off-peak hours, a need for separate tickets at different times of day would have frustrated and confused passengers.
Mr Brown said the legislation appeared to provide a step towards regional council chairman Mike Lee's aspirations for buses to revert to public ownership, but his company would push for changes at select committee hearings.
"At this stage it look likes Mike Lee 1 - NZ Bus 0, but we are definitely going to score some second-half goals."
