Waikato Regional Council’s BUSIT division has released data showing that the farebox recovery for the Raglan to Hamilton bus service has gone up from 45% in 2016 to 47% in 2017, while for the regional as a whole it is only 35%.
Raglan bus champion, John Lawson has asked BUSIT, “What is planned with that money? Why does it not result in a better service?”
Waikato District’s priorities for public transport show an increasing amount being allocated in https://www.waikatoregion.govt.nz/assets/Uploads/Regional-Public-Transport-Plan-Development-Subcommittee-agenda-pack-for-19-Feb-2018.pdf, with $117,000 for the Raglan to Hamilton bus in the coming year. An extract from page 13 of that report has these figures:
Proposed Public Transport Project – Raglan to Hamilton bus service
2018/19 | 2019/20 | 2020/21 | 2021/22 | 2022/23 | 2023/24 | 2024/25 | 2025/26 | 2026/27 | 2027/28
117,000 | 119,574 | 122,205 | 125,015 | 128,016 | 131,088 | 134,365 | 137,859 | 141,581 | 145,545
A spokesperson for BUSIT said, “With regard to the Whatawhata service, this is something we will look into as the double decker service is introduced. Straight number show us that those passengers who usually take the Whatawhata service may be able to be carried on the double decker bus and therefore the Whatawhata bus could potentially be used on a different run on the network – either on the Raglan route or elsewhere. I’ve spoken to the team again about this today, and one of the options is we start the Whatawhata bus back further toward Raglan and use this on the school assist route in the mornings. This gives us really good capacity options on both the regular Raglan to Hamilton service, and Raglan to Hamilton school assist service, which gives us the opportunity for another large marketing push within the community about getting more people on the buses 🙂
We’re always open to other improvement ideas we can undertake within our existing budgets on this, so please continue to send your feedback through.”
There has been no word from BUSIT on what the effect on passenger numbers would be if 3 buses ran at half hourly intervals in the morning, afternoon and evening.