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Patronage on publicly-subsidised Auckland buses is showing a glimmer of recovery after three years of decline, but not enough to satisfy regional council paymasters.
Auckland Regional Council chairman Mike Lee despairs that patronage continues to "flatline" despite an 89 per cent rise in annual subsidies paid to bus operators since 2004.
"It's like pumping blood into the patient and getting the odd twitch," he told the Herald.
The Auckland Regional Transport Authority, a council subsidiary, has reported a 1.2 per cent increase in bus patronage for the year to June 30 - to 42.73 million trips - and a 2.4 per cent rise in overall public transport usage.
That was thanks to a 14.1 per cent increase in rail patronage - to 5.74 million trips - pushing the number of public transport rides around the region to 52.41 million.
But the booming Northern Express route between Albany and Britomart accounted for much of the increase in bus patronage, contributing 830,000 passenger rides, leaving other services just 0.2 per cent better off than the previous year.
Mr Lee said that was within the margin of statistic error and would be a cause for concern even if Auckland's population was not growing.
"The bus sector is not responding to the huge amount of money being poured into it," he told his council's transport policy committee on Tuesday, after hearing a presentation from transport authority officials.
"We need to ensure all our bus services are as cost-effective as possible because the region can't continue the funding increments required without getting a significant increase in patronage."
Bus subsidies, shared roughly equally between the Government and the regional council's ratepayers, have leapt from $45 million in 2004-05 to $85.1 million budgeted for this financial year.
Some of the extra costs are blamed on factors out of the council and transport authority's control, such as a $7.1 million rise in labour and fuel prices last year and having to bail out loss-making unsubsidised bus services in 2005 for $5.5 million.
Patronage has also taken hits from competition from rail, and a strike by Stagecoach bus drivers in 2005 from which business was slow to recover.
The authority is pinning hopes for improvement on law changes promised by the Government to give it greater power to set standards for bus and ferry services, and to hasten the development of a seamless ticket so passengers will not have to pay more than one fare for each trip around Auckland.
Authority chief executive Fergus Gammie told the committee that a big overhaul of North Shore bus services two years ago had resulted in annual patronage growth of between 4 per cent and 5 per cent.
A text-message system was also being developed to allow passengers to find out before leaving home or work how far a bus was away from the nearest stop.
Authority chairman Mark Ford said 42.4 per cent of motorised trips to Auckland's central business district were by public transport, well on the way to a target of 49 per cent by 2016,
But the officials were spared questioning by the politicians on another shadow on their annual report, in which customer satisfaction about overall public transport services was put at 81 per cent compared with 84 per cent in 2005-06.
The proportion of customers rating public transport as offering value for money slipped even further, to 63 per cent from 71 per cent in 2005-06, a result blamed largely on January's fare rises.
