Hutt Valley bus drivers who have been chased by aggressive motorists and sworn at by members of the public say not enough is being done to prevent them being abused on the job.
Tramways secretary Kevin O’Sullivan told the Herald drivers had written complaints late last year to Tranzurban, the bus operator which employs them. The complaints involved drivers being verbally abused and physically threatened.
One report, seen by the Herald, described an incident that took place in November, where a member of the public had recklessly driven after a bus driver in a one-sided car chase.
When the driver slowed down the bus to try to drop off her child passengers, the woman who was chasing her got out of her car and attempted to forcefully open the bus doors to get inside.
“I was crying and in a state of shock,” the complaint read.
The driver wrote that she pressed the panic button in her bus but could not bring herself to speak.
“I had no one try to contact me back and see if I was okay, or what was going on, when I was actually fearing for my life.”
The driver eventually got away from the woman chasing her and a complaint was laid with police.
In that same month, another driver wrote a complaint after he denied entry to a drunk man, who other passengers had previously complained about.
The driver had written about how the drunk man was regularly seen drinking alcohol, shouting gang slogans and making gang signs around central Lower Hutt.
When he raised his concerns with communications staff and asked them to escalate these to police, they allegedly refused because the drunk man had never actually boarded his bus.
“I am disappointed that comms refusal to assist earlier when asked meant this individual was able to be there to abuse drivers later,” the complaint read.
O’Sullivan said the union had tried to escalate a range of complaints with both the Greater Wellington Regional Council, which owns the bus authority Metlink, and the bus operator, Tranzurban, but felt they were “passing the buck” and failing to do enough to prevent further abuse.
Tranzurban said in a statement it was aware of complaints from Hutt Valley employees and that all reports of threats or aggression towards drivers “are reviewed and escalated as appropriate”.
“This is a sad reality for many frontline workers and reflects broader societal issues,” Tranzurban’s Wellington and Hutt Valley general manager Samuel Stairmand said.
O’Sullivan maintained that little had been done to help the Hutt Valley drivers, who he believed were experiencing more abuse than those in other parts of Wellington.
While O’Sullivan said experiencing abuse had become a “daily occurrence” for Hutt drivers, Tranzurban said it had only received reports of threats or aggression on 0.026% of the trips completed by the drivers in the last year.
That comes to about 35 complaints across 135,000 trips made to the company in the last 12 months.
Stairmand told the Herald it gave monthly reports to the council that included health and safety issues, and any incidents drivers reported to them.
Metlink group manager Samantha Gain confirmed council had received reports which “indicated incidents of threatening and aggressive behaviour” to Hutt drivers.
“Any incident that compromises the health and safety of bus drivers is of great concern to Metlink,” Gain said.
“We encourage all our operators to raise significant incidents with New Zealand Police.”
Stairmand said it was “unhelpful” when drivers didn’t directly send complaints to the company because it limited their ability to “support, respond, monitor trends and escalate appropriately“.
“The reason that they’re going to the council is because most people feel as though the company is not doing anything about it,” O’Sullivan said.
He said he had visited the Taitā bus depot a few times over the last three months to speak with drivers who told him they had tried complaining to their company, but nothing changed.
Stairmand said Tranzurban’s current safety measures include operating CCTV, panic buttons and GPS tracking on all buses, training drivers in situational awareness and de-escalation, and offering multiple support and reporting channels.
Emails seen by the Herald show O’Sullivan told council a driver who had almost worked for Tranzurban for a year had received “no de–escalation training despite being told on his commencement this would take place within three months of his start".
Stairmand also said Tranzurban was “advocating for a regular multi-agency forum focused on reducing threats and aggression”.
“Our drivers play a vital role in the community and have the right to do their job without fear of intimidation.”
Janhavi Gosavi is a Wellington-based journalist for the New Zealand Herald who covers news in the capital.