New eBus service more than $1m over budget
The roll-out of Nelson-Tasman’s lauded new eBus service has gone $1.05 million over budget, with a lack of oversight among the reasons given to explain the bill.
Now, councillors from Nelson City and Tasman District councils are demanding assurances the overspend won’t become an annual occurrence.
At the Joint Nelson Tasman regional transport committee meeting on Wednesday, members voted in favour of a request going to each council to cover their share of the overspend bill.
For Nelson that will be $582,000, while Tasman’s share is $180,000. Once the councils agree to fund the local share a request will go to NZ Transport Agency Waka Kotahi to cover the rest.
But, while the committee agreed to send the funding request to the councils, it was not before demanding further understanding about why the 15% to 20% overspend had occurred, with a further report now being produced by staff.
“I would have appreciated an early heads up on the scale of the overrun,” Nelson Mayor Nick Smith said, while calling for more information about what the ongoing costs would be and what potential savings could be made.
“My objective here is to make sure we’re in a good a position as possible ... not sitting here in April 2025 saying ‘oops we made a mistake again’.”
Nelson City Council manager transport and solid waste Margaret Parfitt told the committee one of keylessons was the need for good project management for a project of this scale. “There were some oversights, there were some under-estimations, and there were some overspends.”
Staff movements early in the project had added to the issues, as well as the budgets being set in 2021 not being enough, she said. As well as unbudgeted items and overspends, they also had to fund overflow buses to meet the level of demand (about $10,000 a month), and there were increased costs from route variations ($54,000).
They also had higher-than-anticipated wages for bus drivers and diesel bills for the 20% of the fleet that was still diesel buses. That was covered by the cost indices, which were $147,500 over budget.
They now had a much better understanding of the “money in and the money out”, and had hired a new experienced public transport officer, she said.
City council group infrastructure manager Alec Louverdis said it was “very, very difficult” for staff to sit in front of the committee asking for money to fund the overspend, but the public transport project was one of the most complex the councils had ever undertaken.
“It is what it is. We have expended that and we can’t turn back the clock - I can’t unspend that ... this is not a good look on something that has been particularly successful.”
Patronage on the eBus services in January, February and March was more than double the same months last year, with a record 91,687 rides in March.
Nelson deputy mayor Rohan O’Neill Stevens said the overspends were primarily one-off costs associated with the roll-out, and it shouldn’t detract from the success of the service. “Whilst this isn’t by and means the ideal situation, in the wider context it is understandable,” he said.
Smith said he remained proud of the service and its success, but there needed to be “honest reflection” when there was an overspend of this magnitude.
Any future projects of this size should have an oversight committee to pick up on issues earlier, he said.
Committee chairperson, Tasman deputy mayor Stuart Bryant, said the service had been a “big step forward” for the region and it was easy to be critical retrospectively.