Suburban green bus causes problems for passengers on Raglan to Hamilton service

Raglan’s normal ‘blue bus’ with luggage facilities was out of service for several days last week. We first noticed the smaller green suburban bus, the one without luggage or surfboard facilities, being used on Saturday 15th Feb.

The suburban bus caused problems on the route which progressively got worse until they peaked on Wednesday 19th Feb and Linda Cole, Chairperson of the Raglan Community Board, intervened.  After complaints, the ‘blue bus’ was quickly returned to service. A senior transport manager for a large corporation told Raglan 23 that it was the practice in his company to service vehicles at night so they were fully operational everyday. This certainly doesn’t seem to be a practice that Busit/ Go Bus follows. 

On Wednesday 19th, Linda Cole, received phone calls from irate bus passengers using that morning’s Route 23 Go Bus service to Hamilton. Mrs Cole said, “The bus was too overcrowded requiring people to stand before it left the fifty kilometre zone in Raglan.

“Up to 25 people were required to stand for the entire journey – congestion relieved a little when between 15 to 20 children to alight for Rototuna School, but still requiring some passengers to stand.

“One young lady from Girls High was jammed so tightly in when the bus doors opened she was hit in the face by the inward opening doors – the driver continually packed passengers asking them to move to the back.

“This made it impossible for the person ringing me to alight at their customary stop as they couldn’t get through the standing passengers – hence a ride to the depot.”

Ben Barlow, Acting Programme Manager for Land Transport – Operations at Waikato Regional Council, said, “I have spoken with the bus operator and have been advised that the normal “blue Raglan bus” was not in service for mechanical reasons. A replacement bus was utilised instead. The replacement bus can legally carry 70 passengers.

“We have run a passenger count from the ticketing data to determine how many passengers are travelling on the morning services. After reviewing the recent patronage data on the Raglan service, I found that at no stage have the loadings exceed the legal capacity on the concerned vehicle. The blue bus with storage space is also now back in service from Wednesday 19th Feb. I will be talking to Waikato District Council regarding the options we are investigating regarding the current capacity on the Raglan services.”

Regular bus user John Lawson said, “The bus is still frequently crowded, though not usually that bad. Nine were standing when I came back on the 3.40 last week. Huntly has had its services increased, but not us; we’ve only had the fare rises.”

The last time capacity on the Route 23 services was increased was in 2012, when a short-haul, Whatawhata to Hamilton service was added to take load off the main Route 23 service. At that time Waikato Regional Council said that growth in passenger numbers meant that this would only be a short-term fix.

When asked about the problems, a Waikato District Council spokesperson said, “Having the larger capacity ‘blue’ bus unavailable for a period while it underwent mechanical repairs is unfortunate. From a health and safety perspective this would be completely necessary.”