Regional council deems new bus network a success
Horizons Regional Council hopes to see a continued increase in the use of its new bus service.
The country’s first all-electric bus service was launched in Palmerston North this week, coinciding with a major change to the city’s bus network.
Routes have changed and buses run every 30 minutes from 6.30am to 9pm daily, and as often as every 15 minutes during peak times.
Horizons transport services manager Mark Read said it had been a positive first week of the new network, which had been the biggest change in public transport for the council and for Palmerston North.
It had been a hectic start to the week, he said, but things had calmed down as people got used to the changes.
Horizons has made it free to ride the buses all month to encourage people to use the new service.
Because it’s free, people haven’t been scanning on, but bus drivers had kept a rough tally of the number of passengers.
Read said the number of people who used the bus on Monday and Tuesday had been similar to normally passenger levels, but he expected usage to increase.
The 101 bus, which runs from the airport to Massey University via the hospital and central city, was used by 700 people on Wednesday, which was Horizons’ biggest day for bus use.
“The new network and investment in public transport gives people those opportunities.
“They’re not just being car reliant, but there’s other options as well ... the fact is the previous service was good in parts and it had a number of shortcomings; overall, it wasn’t attractive compared to the private vehicle.”
Read said it took a while before there were benefits from any new public transport system, possibly six to 12 months, as people got to grips with the new network.
“These past 12 months, I think we did about 600,000 to 700,000 trips in Palmerston North. I would love to see that grow to over one million in the next little while and keep going from there.
“The network’s built to certainly be moving more people than what we have in the past.”
Horizons staff have been at the Main St bus terminal all week helping people with advice and handing out timetables.
They also drove a couple of vans earlier this week to places where bus stops or routes had been removed or changed, to pick up people who were waiting for a bus that wouldn’t come.
They had helped a “modest” number of people.
As Horizons ironed out problems and worked out what the trends were, the council’s staff could look at changes.
Routes had changed from loops to lines, going from one end of the city to the other and back.
Once the Palmerston North City Council had determined the final locations of the new bus stops, 40% of the stops would have shelters. Less than 20% had shelters now.
People using the new service this week who were spoken to by the Manawatū Standard had mixed reviews.
Some were pleased with the new routes and full of praise for the changes, meaning they were able to catch more regular buses and services running later in the evening.
But others did not like some of the changes, including one woman who caught the bus every day to take her children to kindergarten.
The removal of her nearest bus stop meant she had to walk an extra 10 minutes at either end of the trip, which wasn’t good if it was raining.
Other commuters were still getting their head around the changes.
Manawatū Standard staff using the service this week were generally happy, aside from the odd missed bus, but there was another one along shortly afterwards.