Bus travel slowed by ticket row

Auckland's new transport super-agency may step in to provide a region-wide seamless ticket between rival public transport operators because of slow progress by the industry itself.

Public concern at the inability of a consortium of bus operators to produce a price-competitive "integrated" ticket has come to a head in a shake-up of the region's northern bus services.

North Shore and Hibiscus Coast residents will gain a 40 per cent increase in peak-time bus services from Monday, expanding their transport network to 1200 local and loop trips a day, and to 945 across the harbour bridge to Auckland City.

But an allocation of about 30 per cent of subsidised North Shore services to a newcomer, West Auckland-based Ritchies Transport, means some key routes will be served by two companies with separate ticketing systems and fares.

The Auckland Regional Transport Authority, which gives bus firms about $58 million a year in subsidies from ratepayers and the Government, has urgently negotiated a limited integrated ticket for bus and ferry travel between Takapuna and Auckland via Bayswater or Devonport.

But it disclosed yesterday that it was considering whether to accept a business plan of the bus consortium to press ahead with developing a region-wide ticket, after agonisingly slow progress, or to take over the whole project itself.

Commuters concerned about the narrow scope of the Takapuna to Auckland scheme will be heartened at word late yesterday that the authority had won approval from the consortium, Auckland Integrated Ticketing, to add two stages of rail travel to the ticket.

Passengers will be able to catch a bus to a ferry, and then travel by rail from Britomart as far as Kingsland, Glen Innes or Ellerslie.

Stagecoach, the region's main bus operator which will from next week have to start sharing North Shore routes with Ritchies, also indicated last night that it may add travel around parts of central Auckland to the ticket.

But the lack of a similar ticket for Glenfield commuters, and those in Bayswater who prefer to travel over the harbour bridge and will have to swap at Takapuna from Ritchies to Stagecoach buses, is adding to pressure for a region-wide scheme.

Transport authority service delivery manager Mark Lambert said the Auckland Regional Council intended about three years ago to start setting up a scheme "similar to what other cities around the world already have".

This was opposed by bus operators, which said they would produce their own ticket and which set up their consortium in 2003 to do that.

But Mr Lambert said the sum product of their efforts to date was a monthly pass for $199, and a $12 day ticket, which were markedly more expensive than those of individual operators and for which sales were very poor, even though they covered buses, trains and ferries.

Ritchies director Andrew Ritchie denied that the bus consortium was dragging its heels, saying a full integrated ticket would cost several millions of dollars to produce and then administer, which would ultimately have to be recovered from passengers.

Bus tickets

The good news

* Extra bus services on the North Shore and Hibiscus Coast start on Monday.

The bad news

* Some routes will be served by two companies with separate ticketing systems and fares, forcing passengers to buy tickets twice.

Result

* The new agency in charge of Auckland transport may start its own ticket system to solve the problem.