Diamond Harbour ferry users ‘over the moon’ with Labour’s promise to cap transport fares

Wednesday, 10 June 2026

The Labour Party has pledged to cap public transport fares if elected, but Christchurch residents say bus reliability is their main concern, and many users won’t benefit from the policy.

The party announced on Wednesday that under a Labour Government, bus fares in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch would be capped at $20 a week, and $10 a week everywhere else.

A Labour Party spokesperson said the Christchurch cap included routes from Waimakariri and Selwyn, and the Diamond Harbour ferry.

In Christchurch, it would effectively reverse the standard fare increase from $2 to $3 last year, which ECan did under pressure from the current government. ECan currently caps fares at two trips a day, or 10 a week, making the existing weekly fare cap $30 for standard users.

The biggest winners are Diamond Harbour ferry users, where weekly fare caps are as high as $50.

Lina Leitane, manager of the Diamond Harbour Youth and Community Trust, said she “started dancing” when she heard the news.

Her family of four used the ferry at least every week day, with at least one adult accompanying two children to or from school. The lowest weekly cap, even for children under 18, was $25.

“We rely on it, and obviously we spend a lot of money on it,” she said.

“If that actually happened … that would be so beneficial for people living on this side of the harbour. There's a really solid community of commuters who go in the mornings, come back in the afternoons or evenings … I think everyone would be over the moon.”

In Riccarton, University of Canterbury students Charlotte Atkinson and Bridget Kirton-Luxford said it would make a difference.

“I don't have a lot of money each week, so [when fares increased in 2025] it was like almost like double my bus budget, so I really couldn't afford to use it any more,” Aitkinson said.

She would be relieved to have the option to take the bus instead of brave bad weather, she said.

However, according to ECan’s trip data for the year to April 2026, about 63% of the 12.5 million trips across Greater Christchurch were already discounted.

Most bus users eligible for concessions already have fare caps of $20 or less. Only youths aged 19-24 get a discount that still takes them above $20, for a $25 per week cap, and they make up under 12% of all riders.

ECan did not break the data down by users, but of all trips taken, just 37% cost the full fare.

Community board member and Hornby representative Cody Cooper said the data raised a question of equity if people on low wages got no benefit, yet residents of the more affluent Lyttelton and Diamond Harbour areas could save as much as $30 a week.

He said money would be better spent on infrastructure improvements, like making buses more frequent and available to areas with high demand like Rolleston, where rising fuel prices recently saw a private provider abandon its commuter service.

“Making public transport more affordable also risks worsening existing overcrowding on many of the most popular services, especially around school and work hours,” he said.

Leitane said it was a stereotype that Diamond Harbour residents were richer than counterparts in the city, but it was not true.

She knew the community and how busy their food bank service was, she said.

Party leader Chris Hipkins said the cap was “a major cost-of-living commitment designed to put money back into the pockets of commuters, students and families”.

Environment Canterbury chairperson Deon Swiggs welcomed the investment, but said residents told his council service reliability was their “number one” concern.

“Our public transport service is also very stretched and we don't have a lot of central government investment coming in … I would love to see some signals around that as well,” he said.

Route 5, which collects residents from Rolleston every 30 minutes, and travels between Hornby and New Brighton every 15 minutes, was recorded as at capacity 2216 times in the year to February 2026, according to ECan data provided under official information laws.

Route 1, which travels between Belfast and Princess Margaret Hospital every 15 minutes, but every 30 minutes collects people from Rangiora and Cashmere, was full 1050 times over that year.

The Labour Party had previously pledged to fund uplifts of routes 1, 5 and 7, but under the National-led coalition only an uplift of route 7, from Halswell to Queens Park, was funded in the 2024-27 National Land Transport Programme.

Swiggs said the need for more frequent buses on routes 1 and 5 was so urgent the regional council had all but signed off on funding the uplift out of their own reserves as part of the upcoming Annual Plan, in the hope a future government would help cover the costs in the next National Land Transport Programme, which will be released next year.

M Grace-Stent of urbanist group Greater Ōtautahi said what Christchurch needed was funding commitments for public transport infrastructure.

Making fares more affordable was a good thing, but the people who benefited the most were existing bus users, and it would not fix the capacity problem, they said.

Grace-Stent said ferry users would likely benefit the most from the scheme, as ECan currently had a $50 weekly cap for ferry users.

The fare cap policy is Labour’s first policy announcement since the Budget and was estimated by the party to cost up to $65m a year.

National’s Simeon Brown criticised the policy on Wednesday as “trying to bribe New Zealanders with their own money”.