Deputy mayor urges action over crammed school buses
Auckland’s deputy mayor has advised Auckland Transport to take action amid a wave of complaints regarding school students being left stranded at bus stops due to overcrowded, overheated buses labelled a “safety hazard”.
Parents have expressed concerns as their children are forced to find their own way to school after school buses, packed full of students, drive straight past them without stopping.
The city-wide issue has seen parents receive phone calls from distraught kids and in some cases resulted in parents having to leave their workplaces to transport multiple children to school.
Deputy Mayor Desley Simpson said she had received reports students in her O¯ra¯kei ward were being left at their bus stops without a way to school.
“If that happens and that was your kid, what would you do? You just go ‘Right, that’s it, I want my kids to get to school so I’ll just take them’, so it’s important to get it right,” she said.
Simpson said Auckland Transport (AT) had been undertaking “daily capacity reviews” of the network, saying it was important to get school bus issues sorted before “March madness” when university students added extra demand.
“The best option for Auckland is that as many kids as possible that want to can catch a bus to school. The more that we can take advantage of public transport the better.”
The reports emerged after AT came under fire from parents of North Shore school students after an overcrowded school bus service, lacking air conditioning, was labelled a “major concern and safety hazard”.
One concerned mother told the Herald about 40 kids were forced to stand on the buses, after all seats were occupied, with no air conditioning, while they drove along State Highway 1 from the Hibiscus Coast to schools on Auckland’s North Shore.
“I just think that’s extremely dangerous,” she said.
Video obtained by the Herald showed some students having to stand on top of seat backs, while holding on to handrails, with no extra room to stand on the bus floor.
The deputy mayor said she had asked AT to contact schools where capacity issues had been reported.
“They’re having a look to provide a detailed list of all available services within the school zone, including school buses as well as scheduled public urban services.”
AT’s director of public transport, Stacey van der Putten, told the Herald the issues were not being picked up proactively due to data not showing the buses in question as full as a result of students failing to tag on with their AT HOP cards.
“I’d rather be responding proactively based on data than through complaints, because that helps everybody to get to where they need to be safely.”
She identified six school bus services over-capacity on Monday last week alone.
Van der Putten said AT had been working on contacting schools most affected by overcrowding and providing more “travel planning” details and relaying advice for students.
“There’s a number [of solutions] and one of the most important is actually working with the school and providing a full list in terms of details of particular routes that students can travel on. It’s not necessarily just dedicated school buses and sometimes that message does not get through.”
She said identified schools AT had been in contact with included Selwyn College, Rangitoto College, Long Bay College, Westlake schools, Carmel College and Takapuna Normal Intermediate.
Van der Putten said AT had seen a large rise in commuters over the past week, with bus patronage doubling compared to 2019, pre Covid-19.
“This time of year when schools commence we always get a bubble of demand and that is due to students starting school or changing schools. The demand is there so being able to be flexible is important”.
Van der Putten said Hibiscus Coast and St Johns had been identified as areas with significant problems and AT had sent transport officers to those zones “to help funnel students onto different services”.
AT would look to supplement services in the coming weeks where a “continued over-consumption of capacity” was observed, she said.