KEY POINTS:
Auckland Regional Council members are being warned that legislation to tighten bus and ferry services is too cumbersome to allow any real progress in their three-year term of office.
Chairman Mike Lee told councillors yesterday, at their first transport committee meeting since the local body elections, that the legislation soon to be considered by Parliament put too long a lead time on any changes to passenger services.
Operators such as NZ Bus (formerly Stagecoach) believe the Public Transport Management Bill goes too far in proposing to give councils the right to control even those services which do not receive regional and Government subsidies, with those that do.
Although the legislation stops short of giving regional councils power to introduce a fully contracted system - in which they would receive all passenger fares before paying fees to operators based on patronage levels - the Government says they would be able to impose controls on anything from the frequency of trips to the colour of buses and ferries.
But councils would first have to conduct extensive consultations on new regional public transport plans stipulating such controls, and then wait for 18 months for these to become operative.
Mr Lee said the existing mixture of subsidised and non-contracted services, into which his council was "pouring enormous amounts of money", was failing Auckland and he was alarmed at the time delays written into the legislation.
"We have to create yet another transport plan and there must be four of those already," he said. "God knows how long it takes us to make a plan - and then we have to wait 18 months to make changes, so probably not in our term of office will we see anything at all. We have to draw the Government's attention to this."
Christine Perrins, head of a council unit overseeing subsidiary organisations such as the Auckland Regional Transport Authority, said the legislation offered little or no scope to decline to register non-subsidised services deemed inconsistent with passenger plans.
Councils will be able to do so if such services are likely to harm the financial viability of subsidised bus or ferry operations, but they will have only seven days to assess applications for registration.
Ms Perrins said that was a "completely unrealistic" time-frame, and it appeared financial information to be supplied by transport operators for planning purposes would not be able to be used in deciding whether to register new services.
A proposed council submission on the legislation notes that it has committed $700 million of regional funds for bus and ferry services over 10 years, in hopes of increasing the public transport share of peak-time travel from 7 per cent in 2005 to 11 per cent by 2016.
A matching amount of funding will be needed from the Government through Land Transport NZ.
Noting the important contribution needed from public transport to combat climate change, the submission says it is essential that the regulatory framework supports effective, efficient and integrated services "which are attractive and easy for passengers to use".
But transport operators believe the legislation offers regional councils far too much power, even to the extent of forcing them to surrender successful parts of their business if they are unprepared to run these in conjunction with other stipulated services.
NZ Bus director Tim Brown said it was theoretically possible that his company's Link service through central Auckland, which is largely unsubsidised and has just had a 20-bus fleet upgrade for almost $8 million, could become a casualty.
