Bus services and road safety a priority

Bruce Gordon

Bus services and road safety obviously resonate with ratepayers across the Horizons Regional Council area because those two issues alone have attracted the majority of submissions to the council's 10-Year Plan.

Horizons chair Bruce Gordon and chief executive Michael McCartney fronted the Wanganui District Council meeting this week to outline key points to the plan.

The regional council is looking at improving the current bus route structure but this was focused on Palmerston North so would have no impact on ratepayers outside the limits of the city boundary.

But the plan does include a look at trial service between Wanganui and Palmerston North which has already been supported by the Wanganui Council.

UCOL runs a regular service between the two cities for students and Mr Gordon said Horizons had tried to get some tie in with that service.

"But UCOL has pushed back every effort from us to get the service cross-subsidised to include others in the communities other than just students," he said.

He said the council was mindful that it did not want to be in conflict with any private bus operators and while UCOL did not appear interested his council would continue to make advances.

Horizons 10-Year Plan also considers quitting its current road safety programmes in two years' time.

"This issue has been a huge frustration for us and we only looked at exiting the service when we learned government subsidies for the services were going to be decreased.

"We decided it was not our core business. But since then the subsidies have been revised. In fact the whole debate has been a waste of time," he said.

Mr Gordon said of the raft of submissions received, about 90 per cent of them are against exiting the road safety activity.

Mr McCartney said the weight of submissions was probably a clear sign that programme will remain in place.