Driving over awkward home truths

0.5per cent.

You read that right. It’s the percentage of Hawke’s Bay commuters taking the bus to work every morning. That’s 940 people.

Every time I look at that Censusgathered figure it shocks me.

It’s in Hawke’s Bay Regional Council’s draft Regional Land Transport Plan (2021-2031) released this year.

The 0.5 per cent is for all forms of public transport – not just buses.

But of course, it is buses, because Hawke’s Bay (population 180,000 across two cities and numerous towns) doesn’t have a single train, tram, underground or any other funky form of public transport.

The council’s draft plan, all 53 pages of it, should have been a call to action for the region. Within prosaic sentences are statements and statistics to knock you for six.

It note 10 per cent of people walk or cycle to work, but also makes the blistering (albeit uncited) declaration that Hawke’s Bay has the lowest physical activity rate in New Zealand.

It notes the region has one of the highest obesity rates in the country, with over 70 per cent of adults and over 35 per cent of children aged 2-14 considered overweight or obese. It blames “car dependency”. Too right.

The harbinger of climate change doom, An Inconvenient Truth ,came out in 2006. Hawke’s Bay shrugged and chose convenience.

You have to wonder if the plan’s goal over the next 10 years — to turn 10.5 per cent of walkers, cyclists and bus takers into 30 per cent — is possible.

To turn around this car-focused steering wheel, the council will have to be crystal clear that the only solution is to be radical.

Its “Uber bus”, touted as a public transport solution, will barely make a dent.

An alternative roadmap starts with roads. There’s five or six of them that wind their way between the twin cities. Make two for buses only. Make another for cyclists only.

Make all public transport free. Invest in more buses and better buses – get one outside as many houses as possible every 10 minutes in the morning.

Connect the buses to comfortable transfer stations where express services between the Twin Cities leaves every minute or two. Build the capacity, build the demand.

Forget about a shiny new hotel and turn the abandoned council offices in Napier into a huge central bus exchange.

In Hastings, knock down the green Westpac building eyesore and co-opt the carpark for a proper central bus exchange.

Bring back commuter rail, and give Central Hawke’s Bay a public transport option as you do it.

It might need some hard negotiation with KiwiRail.

These are just ideas, sure. But we need ideas.

Or we sit idly in traffic on the Hawke’s Bay Expressway, turning up the air-conditioning as the world heats up around us.