Multimillion-dollar penalties for Wellington bus operators over delays

Thursday, 6 July 2023

A Tranzurban bus on The Parade in Island Bay - a suburb notorious for bus delays and cancellations.

Bus operators in Wellington have been financially penalised by Metlink over their failure to deliver timely services.

Abatements have been deducted from all major services for chronic delays and cancellations, with the worst among them Tranzurban, owned by Tranzit.

Since January 2022, Tranzurban has been subject to eight abatements each month consistently bar December 2022 when service interruptions hindered “reasonable measurement” by Metlink.

By contrast, NZBus was, on average, subject to almost half the number of abatements as Tranzurban.

The result was a $4 million saving from Metlink at the end of the third quarter, according to Greater Wellington Regional Council.

Wellington Regional Transport Committee chairperson Thomas Nash said there were consequences for a bus operator when its buses failed to show.

“We have a contract system that has incentives and disincentives. And if you do better than the key performance indicators, then you get a bonus.

Thomas Nash said the regional council’s transport committee was working with Tranzurban to reduce cancellations, delays, and associated penalties.

“But if you don't deliver a service, we don't pay for it.”

Many commuters have come to their wit’s end with their local bus route’s reliability thanks in part to driver shortages and following the overhaul of the city’s buses in 2018.

In Island Bay, where most bus routes are operated by Tranzurban, services had become so unreliable that a community carpool was set up to compensate for the delays.

Nash said he recognised there was a public interest in making sure bus operators fulfil their obligations.

“I think there is a public interest in in knowing that the hundreds of millions of dollars of public funds that go into these contracts are being spent in a way that delivers the service.”

Ben Everist is one of the drivers for Island Bay’s carpool group which was set up in response to bus cancellations that left commuters stranded in the suburbs.

In a statement, Metlink general manager Samantha Gain said abatements were an “important contractual tool to help incentivise operator performance” and as performance improves, abatements will reduce.

Tranzurban declined to comment directly on the abatements but instead promised that cancellations had been dropping steadily as new drivers come on to the roster.

In December 2022, Tranzurban set a target of 75 new drivers by March. By mid-April, they’d hired 80.

An NZBus spokesperson confirmed that as of June, all services were running as required and no abatements were required thanks to an eight month drive to recruit drivers locally and from overseas.

Nash said that as things stand, Tranzurban was falling short.

“When you have one operator that has delivered in the timeline that everyone has set for themselves, and you have another operator that hasn't, I think everybody would expect that people are going to be disappointed. And unfortunately, that's the situation here.

“But that doesn't mean that we don't value the partnership and we’re totally committed to fixing this problem. Tranzurban has a big part to play in that and we're here to support them and work with them.”