AN 18-month bus trial between Te Kūiti, Ōtorohanga and Hamilton, to begin in February, is to be backed financially by Ōtorohanga District Council. FILE PHOTO
A REGIONAL bus service from Te Kūiti, Ōtorohanga, and Hamilton will begin trials in February, with the Ōtorohanga District Council deciding this week to back the trial financially. The total cost for the council in the current financial year will be about $9700. During the 18-month trial the overall cost is expected to be $34,000. Budget impact for the 2023/24 financial year of approximately $24,000 could be included in the Draft Annual Plan. In approving the recommendations the council was making a commitment to fund the entire 18-month trial, CEO Tanya Winter’s report said. The trial bus service will provide daily commuter and student access to Hamilton. It comes on the back of a three-month DHB service providing a Taumarunui-Hamilton service, but it did not meet the needs of tertiary students or the general work commuter.
TRAVEL OPTIONS Adding peak-hour services between Te Kūiti and Hamilton, with stops in Ōtorohanga, and would provide a combination of travel options, enabling people to travel later in the day or return earlier. Waikato Regional Council director of regional transport connections Mark Tamura, was unable to answer mayor Max Baxter’s question about bus stop locations and the timetable, except it was intended to allow a full commuter day in the city, which met the needs of university students and commuters. The fare from Te Kūiti to Hamilton would be $4 one way if using a Beecard, Mark said. The cash price was $6. “There is also a weekly cap,” he said. “So if you are travelling every day, the most you will be paying for that over the course of a week is $36 for an adult or for a youth $30 or under. “The other thing to add on top of this however, is the University of Waikato is also contributing to the fare costs of its students, because this would replace its daily shuttle service.”
FREE TRIP University students would probably have a free trip, because that was what they received from the current dedicated shuttle service. “When you consider the cost of travel nowadays the opportunity for rangatahi to travel and to get educated and travel home again is really, really, good,” Max said. Mark said the MOE was expecting about 18 passengers each way each day. “But that’s only from the education cohort, so we are expecting to double that,” Mark said. “So we are looking at the order of 30 passengers per day, which is quite good utilisation for that length of trip for our standard format vehicles. “I think what we have learned is the value of these types of trial services. Our best estimates are only ever best estimates and the numbers could vary significantly, so there is significant benefit in the trial in itself to understand peoples willingness to travel.”
WAITOMO IDEA Tanya Winter said the collaborative service originated from Waitomo CEO Ben Smit who became aware in June of the Ministry of Education interest in a service to link Te Kūiti to the two Hamilton Wintec campuses and invited Waikato Regional Council to investigate options. The result is an innovative and collaborative 18-month trial service enabled by resources allocated by Te Mahau, (part of the MOE) the University of Waikato, Waka Kotahi New Zealand Transport Agency, three district councils, WRC and fare revenues. Adding peak-hour services between Te Kūiti and Hamilton, with stops in Ōtorohanga, provided a combination of travel options, enabling people to travel later in the day or return earlier. “For a reasonably small sum we can leverage quite a substantial amount of funding to put a service in our community that’s probably been a bit kind of a light touch approach in the past,” Tanya said.
UNBUDGETED “It’s unbudgeted expenditure, while the sum is not large the subject is public transport. Territorial authorities were not generally in the business of funding public transport.” The report was brought to council because there was nothing in the annual plan or long term plan about funding public transport, she said. Mark told district councillors the bus service was an unique opportunity and the first of its kind in respect of the level of collaboration and the number of parties that had been brought together in relatively short order. It was unique for the Ministry of Education to directly fund a public transport service, he said. “But it does come on the back of quite considerable work bringing their interest in providing accessibility for students into tertiary education opportunities together with WINTEC and our own public transport and the opportunity to leverage that to do something better together than what any one of us would be able to do individually,” Mark said.
