NZ Bus Patronage September 2008
21 October 2008
For the six months, NZ Bus’ Auckland patronage was up 7% to almost 20 million trips while Wellington patronage rose 4% to 10.6 million trips. Whangarei services continue to beat expectations as the city now has one of NZ’s best public transport services outside of a major metropolitan area.The increases reflect both work undertaken to improve services by NZ Bus and its regional council partners and the higher cost of private motoring encouraging people to use the bus and ferry.
In September the drivers' strike adversely impacted Wellington City patronage, but this was a one-off and the ongoing improvement to the quality of the GO Wellington services is expected to result in patronage growth resuming.
Parliament's passage of the Public Transport Management Act under urgency, with a slew of drastic last-minute amendments, was a blow to all private providers of public transport, but set against that the NZ First initiative to have those with Super Gold Cards travel free in off-peak times is already showing that quick positive results are possible from good policy measures.
In Wellington the roll out of Snapper has far exceeded expectations. Over 30,000 cards have been issued and Snapper is already more popular than the 10-trip ticket it is replacing. Work is underway to introduce school fares using Snapper and roll out Snapper in the Hutt Valley.
| Auckland passengers | Year to 31 March | 6 months to 30 Sept 2008 |
| 2007 | 37,210,897 | 18,638,872 |
| 2008 | 36,648,393 | 19,956,312 |
| Change | (1.5%) | 7.1% |
| Wellington passengers | ||
| 2007 | 20,276,179 | 10,206,281 |
| 2008 | 19,723,961 | 10,601,150 |
| Change | (2.7%) | 3.9% |
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