NEW LAW POSES RISKS TO PUBLIC TRANSPORT PROGRESS
The Chamber 09.2008
WELLINGTON TRANSPORT
A key component of the Chamber’s strategy for growing the Wellington economy through infrastructure development is the need for an enhanced public transport system. We see this as crucial to reducing congestion and improving mobility in the region.
It is pleasing that Wellington’s public transport is currently in the throes of a significant and long-overdue upgrade. The Regional Council, using rate payer money, is buying new trains and a real-time information system. The City Council, using rate and tax payer money, is tentatively working towards enhanced bus priorities. The main bus operator NZ Bus, using its shareholders’ money, is buying new buses, introducing a new public transport ticket and generally scrubbing up its operations. The East West ferry services have recently been expanded, at its shareholders’ risk, to include Seatoun.
Into this positive environment Government has parachuted a new piece of legislation, the Public Transport Management Act, which markedly increases regional council control of public transport. The legislation was apparently designed to help solve Auckland woes, but a sideeffect is that Greater Wellington Regional Council can now call all the shots over the region’s bus and ferry services.
Auckland authorities have been vociferous about their need for total and minute control of every bus and ferry (they already control the trains), but their views seem more based on ideology than on what works well. Certainly the evidence in Wellington, where public transport does work well, is that public and private parties have complementary roles and a takeover by the Regional Council would benefit no one.
Because Greater Wellington has said little on the new law it isn’t clear what its perspective is, but the temptation to flex a few of its new muscles will be there. In the parliamentary debate on the Bill, the National Party opposition indicated it would remove that temptation were it in a position to do so next year. But whatever happens on the legislative front, it is hoped that the Greater Wellington councillors take note of how well the existing model is tracking before stepping in.
An immediate challenge to Greater Wellington is its position on the Snapper initiative of Infratil and ANZ. This modernage public transport ticket has been launched on the GO Wellington buses and Infratil has indicated it expects it to soon be available on the Mana Newlands buses, the East West ferries and even the Cable Car. The missing link is clearly the TranzMetro trains owned by Greater Wellington.
Greater Wellington’s support or opposition to trialling the Snapper on its trains will be the first test of whether it is succumbing to its new powers or whether it remains focused on delivering what is best for Wellington’s public transport, which, incidentally, comes at no cost to rate or tax payers.
The debate over whether Greater Wellington should exercise its new powers is not just about the need to encourage private sector initiative, it is also about the allocation of risk.
With power comes responsibility. At present if people do not use the bus it is NZ Bus’s finances which suffer. If Snapper costs millions more than budgeted or is made redundant by a new Westpac or Kiwibank card, it is Infratil and ANZ’s look out. If Greater Wellington exerts more control it necessarily will take more risk on behalf of the region’s ratepayers.
Politicians have a bad track record of understanding and managing risk. In Victoria and NSW the public transport agencies have been working to produce their own version of the Snapper card. NSW’s was meant to be operational for the 2000 Olympics. Victoria now has a total budget for its card of A$1.35 billion. Wellington has Australasia’s most used bus service (as measured by rides per capita) and by far the most popular public transport service in New Zealand. Not only is it popular and relatively low cost, it is on track to getting better because the public and private parts of the equation are working constructively together. Let’s hope power does not corrupt that healthy arrangement.
Extracted from Wellington Chamber of Commerce Newsletter
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