Bus questions still unanswered
The Greater Wellington Regional Council’s defence of their bus efforts (Getting buses up to speed, September 18) says all the right PR words but deserves some analytical probing.
If in fact the council planned ‘‘the biggest change to Wellington public transport in decades’’ then its CEO should have ensured that the skills and manpower were in place to make it happen; it was always part of his job to anticipate major problems.
If some buses don’t run because of driver absence, then why were dozens of competent drivers made redundant at the change? Where are the modernday equivalent of the old inspectors whose job was to be on the ground dealing with such issues? Predictably, would not starting a system which depended on transferring at hubs before any hubs were ready — and in mid-winter — annoy passengers?
There are indeed ‘‘many variables that don’t show up on a computer model’’ but which should have been obvious, like the fact that double-deckers take longer to load than singledeckers, or that Wellington has many narrow, steep and winding roads.
Understandably, the head of the council’s transport committee, Barbara Donaldson, has ducked for cover about all this until now, but should not the council’s chair put someone else in place to give the needed political leadership?
Alan Smith, Lower Hutt
Main issues missed
Chris Laidlaw and Barbara Donaldson have got it wrong again! Not only have they understated the magnitude of the adverse response — ‘‘inevitably some commuters are unhappy’’ (I think it’s a few more than that implies) — they haven’t even grasped the main issues, judging from the three they identified, two of which were relatively minor.
The issues are not about late buses, but about NO buses, as well as lack of carrying capacity. But the bigger issue is about the loss of flexibility, convenience and choice afforded previously by having multiple routes through many suburbs to the CBD and beyond.
Previously there were several ways to get to the same place and a choice of destinations from the same place. The single routes now offered reduce the opportunities to pick up and drop passengers throughout the route and have led to extreme congestion on footpaths at peak times.
Wellington is not Sydney or Auckland; our geography requires a different transport model with intersecting routes through the CBD, not hubs. Marilyn Head, Newtown [abridged]
Doubt on numbers
Chris Laidlaw and Barbara Donaldson claim that ‘‘Metlink operates some 38 million bus journeys a year’’. Do they actually believe this?
That’s over 100,000 ‘‘bus journeys’’ per day. This number fails even the most basic snifftest. The figure must surely refer to passenger journeys, not bus journeys, but this misleading statement appears in the context of excessive busnumbers in the Golden Mile so the implied meaning is there.
And these two leading councillors have put their names to it. Is this carelessness or cluelessness? Either way it does not inspire confidence that these two have a good handle on the public transport system they are responsible for. These are the same councillors who presided over the destruction of the trolley bus network based on similarly suspect figures relating to the cost of retaining it, and promised us that a fleet of battery buses would be ready to take over. Now we are being assured that a solution to the present problems is near at hand. Can we believe this? David Bond, Ngaio
Destructive deer
Peter Maxwell (letters, Sept 19) asks why ‘‘the Government’s own agencies treat [deer] worse than vermin’’. Feral deer are the most devastating of the vermin infesting our native forests. An adult deer can eat 30-40kg of leaves from native plants every day.
Many thousands of feral deer, plus goats, tahr, chamois, pigs and wallabies infest our precious and unique native plant communities. Pestfree 2050 must involve eliminating every one of these pests from the wild. Aerial 1080 drops, plus government hunters, are essential to restoring our native forests to their full capacity as carbon sinks.
Chris Horne, Northland