Bid for locals to use Tauranga buses

The Tauranga mayor has suggested the council takes control of the city's public transport services.

Stuart Crosby floated the idea during a debate on a document being prepared by the Bay of Plenty Regional Council called Tauranga Public Transport Blueprint.

"We must get students back on to buses because a lot of congestion was caused by student transportation," he said.

A household travel survey showed Tauranga had the lowest number of people catching the bus compared with the country's other big cities.

Less than 1 per cent of residents used public transport to get around compared with three per cent in Hamilton, four per cent in Dunedin, five per cent in Christchurch and six per cent in Auckland.

The blueprint is the first stage of the review of Tauranga's public transport network and will be put to the regional council's public transport subcommittee for adoption in February.

The review will continue until mid-2017 and coincides with the expiry of Tauranga's urban and Schoolhopper services contracts in about 18 months' time.

Councillors were told that re-tendering the contracts was driving the review which required a business case to support continued investment in the city's public transport network.

The business case was needed by the New Zealand Transport Agency.

Mr Crosby said the regional council collected a targeted rate from Tauranga ratepayers to help fund the city's public transport services. The meeting agreed to support the content of the blueprint.