Satellite towns feed bus fleet
It’s 5am and Sheldon Aden is up and getting ready to catch the bus into Hamilton.
The 22-year-old Wintec student lives in Te Aroha and catches the Morrinsville/Paeroa bus four times a week.
He’s used to the 75-minute journey – for four years, it’s been his main form of transport to the polytech’s city campus.
He catches two buses around peak times – one at 7am and one around 5pm.
He mainly sleeps on the morning leg, and then winds down on the way home.
The commute can take its toll, but it beats living in Hamilton, he says.
‘‘Mostly because it’s too expensive to flat.
‘‘The dorms at Wintec are expensive and I don’t have anyone to flat with . . . and living at home is a lot cheaper.’’
Bus fares vary depending on where you board, but for an adult paying cash, it’s $5.90 from Morrinsville, $8.40 from Te Aroha and $11.80 from Paeroa. Prices are cheaper with a bus card.
Aden said he’s seen the numbers increase over the years and said once the bus leaves the Hamilton bus depot, it will fill up at the stops before it leaves the city.
Public transport is gaining in popularity as daily commuters from outside Hamilton fill seats in peak times.
While the number of passengers on city buses has dipped slightly, rural travellers have increased.
Passenger numbers on the Morrinsville/Paeroa route have climbed more than 15 per cent in the past 12 months.
Other routes are up, too: Raglan-Hamilton increased 6 per cent, Cambridge-Hamilton 10 per cent and Te Awamutu-Hamilton 5 per cent.
Boardings on Hamilton buses were 3.4 million – down 1 per cent on the same time last year.
Sara Roche catches the evening bus to Morrinsville once a week for work. She said it’s packed most evenings.
‘‘It’s crazy now. It used to be a small bus, but they had to get a huge one to make room for everyone else.’’
Waikato Regional Council public transport manager Andrew Wilson presented a public transport update to the Hamilton City Council Growth and Infrastructure Committee meeting last week.
‘‘We’ve had really good growth on services that connect to towns around Hamilton,’’ Wilson said.
While the 12-month figures show a slight decrease, month on month there has been improvement.
‘‘A lot has happened in the 12-month window. Since October, and in January this year, we’ve implemented a lot of network changes and service improvements and we are seeing patronage respond really positively to that. Since those changes, we’ve been tracking at about 1.7 per cent.’’ That increase saw two new 87-seater double deckers put on the Orbiter service from the first week in April and two more are expected for the Raglan and Northern Connector routes.
‘‘The first service we put the double decker bus on, the vehicle was fully loaded, so it was a really good sign,’’ Wilson said.
In the five months since new timetables and routes were put in place for the Orbiter, there has been a 4.4 per cent increase in passenger trips.
Wilson said the city bus service is under pressure. Adult passengers make up 48 per cent of all users, schoolchildren 28 per cent, seniors 15 per cent and tertiary students 9 per cent.
‘‘Peak time services are under a lot of capacity pressure at the moment,’’ he said.
‘‘Half of all boarding occur during those peak periods and about half that off-peak period.’’
‘‘There is significant potential to grow patronage in the shoulder peaks as well.
‘‘There is a lot of emphasis and focus on that.’’
Platform pressure at The Base could be eased by a bus and rail station on Tasman Road, where Hamilton City Council has already secured land for a park-and-ride area, should commuter rail to Auckland go ahead.
Hamilton City Council and Waikato Regional Council are working in conjunction with Waikato District Council, KiwiRail, the Ministry of Transport and Auckland Transport. Regional council chief financial officer Mike Garrett said the strategic business case for an interim service will be delivered by the end of the month.
Demand for the commuter rail service is being investigated, Garrett said, and a number of businesses have taken an interest.
‘‘We targeted a lot of large corporates like Fonterra and the university, DHB and others to test interest at those organisations,’’ Garrett said. ‘‘If you think of Fonterra, they have a number of staff who are commuting from Hamilton to Auckland every day to meetings, so they are providing some robust data on the potential use they would have.’’
Hamilton city councillor Martin Gallagher said while the immediate work is being done on the interim strategy, council needs to also think ahead.
‘‘We should stress that this interim rail service is but a beginning of a long-term strategy linking Auckland to Hamilton and Waikato.’’
‘‘The dorms at Wintec are expensive . . . and living at home is a lot cheaper.’’
Sheldon Aden
‘‘It’s crazy now. It used to be a small bus, but they had to get a huge one to make room for everyone else.’’
Sara Roche