Wednesday’s 3.40pm Hamilton to Raglan bus service left 11 people behind at the Hamilton Transport Centre and 4 people behind at Dinsdale. This followed an incident last week when a Go Bus inspector intervened and stopped an overloaded Raglan bus from leaving the Hamilton Transport Centre. On that occasion a mini-bus was put on the route.
All passengers on the bus were given a flyer indicating that leaving passengers standing on the roadside may be a regular occurrence from now on. The flyer says that Waikato Regional Council plan to repeat this every day if necessary. Parents are urged to check that their children did get on the bus before leaving them. The flyer doesn’t say what parent should do about children left standing in Hamilton.
Te Mata bus operator Dave Brown said, “What is needed is to make the Hamilton to Raglan service express until after the Highbrook subdivision and then put a new minibus on to service the Hamilton to Highbrook section of the route.”
They can’t even find a picture of the Raglan bus to put on the leaflet. Waikato District Council picked out the Raglan bus to make 40% of its costs from fares, though the latest report from the bus manager to regional council says, “Farebox recovery for January 2012 was 20.17% compared to 18.50% in January 2011. It is anticipated that the February network changes and marketing will deliver further improvements.” So Raglan bus was expected to make twice as much as other buses, even before getting more fares from a huge increase in passengers and a fare rise of up to 48%. With all that extra income there should be plenty to pay for the extra buses needed to avoid overcrowding.
It’d also help if they negotiated with the Auckland buses to get an arrival in Hamilton between the 3.40 and 5.40 buses to Raglan. That way many of the tourists on the 3.40 bus would catch the 5.40 instead.
Yes a photo of Hamilton’s Orbiter bus was on their flyer!!
I don’t understand why Waikato District Council allocates 41% of WDC’s general rate to roading, yet the Raglan Bus users will be obliged to pay increase fares for a service which leaves passengers behind in Hamilton. How does this practice fit with Council’s Community Outcomes for a “Safe Waikato – This outcome relates to people feeling safe and supported within their communities”?
I went to the hearings on Waikato’s regional transport plan yesterday. They were aware of the peak oil graph in Dunedin’s 2011 assessment, but still plan for more and more roads. The only chink of light was the Mayor of Hauraki pushing for more cycleways. Ian Gooden, Waikato District head of roading, talked of unaffordable buses, though only 1.6%, of the 41% of our general rate taken for roads, goes to buses (8% of Raglan ratepayers have no car). I reminded them that Section 14 of the Land Transport Management Act 2003 includes as a core requirement that “the regional transport committee must be satisfied that the regional land transport programme contributes to the aim of achieving an affordable, integrated, safe, responsive, and sustainable land transport system”. They said mine was the only objection to the legality of their plan, implying there must be something wrong with my objection, rather than their plan. How do we get through to these people who don’t want to change what they’ve always done, which is the core of the problem for the Raglan bus?
After a career in customer service and the latter years consulting with global companies, the norm is that managers say, ‘we’ve only had one complaint’. In my experience, each complaint that reaches the top or in this case a submission is an indicator of over 300 people with the same view. A paradigm shift will be needed before views on roading expenditure change.
http://www.facebook.com/BUSITWaikato says, “no funding is available for additional Raglan services. This fact is understood by the Raglan community board, Waikato District Council and Waikato Regional Council.” I’ve added a comment there that RCB doesn’t seem to understand why that should be when other services are much more heavily subsidised.
Hi Rodger since the Waikato Times changed to morning delivery the whole of Raglan West is now being woken at 4am six days a week by a noisy delivery vehicle with a modified engine or faulty muffler. I’ve spoken to one of the Waikato Times Circulation supervisors who has expressed concern over the matter but is unable to take action unless more people complain. The person to contact is Wendy at 849 9619
Stuart M
Raglan West
It is in our street at 5.30am and often wakes me up. The Times does need a quieter vehicle delivery.