Making Wellington bus-friendly
AS I look out my window on these wet winter mornings I observe those valiant, hivis-vested cyclists battling rain, wind and the odd snowflake as they pedal to work.
I don’t like turning up to meetings dripping wet and with pneumonia, so I’m a fair-weather cyclist.
During our annual August rain festival, the question is whether to go by car or bus.
Theoretically it should be the bus. It’s cleaner, greener, cheaper and parking is no problem. Trouble is, on rainy winter mornings, thousands of Wellingtonians have exactly the same idea so I know the ride will be steamy and slow.
Quite often I’ll sneak into the car and curse the ‘bloody traffic’, conveniently forgetting that I am the bloody traffic.
Despite having some bus lanes, our city’s buses, as they stop for passengers or wait behind other buses stopping for passengers, usually take longer than cars to get to the CBD. However, that may change if a not inexpensive business case released last week is to be believed.
Fully separated bus lanes that would give buses priority at intersections would cut nearly eight minutes off the average bus trip. But they would cost over $170 million so have been shelved for less expensive options that would cut less time. Regional public transport portfolio leader Paul Swain may have a point when he says the faster option could lead to ‘‘big concrete channels’’ which could make the city may less liveable, especially for cyclists and pedestrians. However, I suspect our local politicians are also very mindful of the cost when they see Jafa ratepayers, sometimes earning over a grand a week from capital gain on their properties, screaming blue murder over a 9 per cent rate rise.
Public transport advocates say that we are under-investing in buses and they are right. The trouble is, we’ve been underinvesting is buses for so long, the problem is a big one. Take bus fares, for example. Our government and local bodies want more people to use buses.
But unlike our region’s trains, patronage has not risen.
Common sense says that if bus fares were lowered then more people would take the bus. True, but given that central government funding is set, if patronage didn’t rise, the regional ratepayer would pay most of the loss with the resulting voter backlash.
Another recommendation of the business case was to ban cars from even more parts of the Golden Mile. Good job. When parts of Lambton Quay became car-free the sky didn’t fall in. If you have lots to do in town at different places it makes far more sense to park in one place then bus or walk around.
Now you might think that banning cars from the inner-city is an idea so impractical and loony Left that if you put an electric bicycle underneath it you could call it Celia, but remember that a few years back Sir Bob Jones advocated making the entire CDB carless and received a lot of support.
So will banning cars fully solve the bus congestion problem? No way. We’ve all seen long lines of buses ‘‘hunting in packs’’ during rush hour.
According to our expensive experts, the solution to bus congestion is to have bigger buses. It sounds great until you learn that the touted hybrid doubledecker buses won’t get through the Karori and Seatoun tunnels, and their heavy engines may ruin the roads. What about big ‘‘accordion’’ buses? I can just imagine them galumping around the narrow sharp corner into Manners St.
It would be great to be able to advocate a really simple, costeffective, environmentally friendly solution. Yet it seems that Wellington public transport’s current relationship status is ‘‘it’s complicated’’.
The answer? A lot of us are quite ignorant about the situation. We blame the city council for regional council or NZTA decisions, and vice versa. These bodies are currently working together on the buses so the more input the public can make the better.
I’ve noticed younger Wellingtonians are far less dependent on cars than their parents. The carless kids happily use a combination of cycling, public transport and cabs.
The real question is not whether we become a more bus-friendly city but how quickly.
Despite having some bus lanes, our city’s buses, as they stop for passengers or wait behind other buses stopping for passengers, usually take longer than cars to get to the CBD.