KEY POINTS:
Centre-left candidates for the Auckland Regional Council are ruffling commercial and political feathers by vowing to push for a publicly owned bus company.
Council chairman Mike Lee's six-member Regional People ticket wants the council to set up a "niche" bus operation to give private operators a run for the tens of millions of dollars of subsidies they receive annually from ratepayers and the Government.
They have been fired up by a revelation that annual regional bus patronage of 42.7 million passenger trips remains 5 per lower than it was in 2004, despite an almost 90 per cent increase - to $85 million - in subsidies paid to private bus companies.
But the opposing Citizens and Ratepayers team says a publicly owned operation reminiscent of the old Yellow Bus Company would put ratepayer funds at needless risk, now that the Government is promising legislation to give regional councils stronger bargaining positions when letting bus contracts.
Commercial lawyer and Regional People candidate Shale Chambers, leading the campaign for a public bus company, said yesterday that it would be run at a distance "twice-removed" from the council through its Auckland Regional Holdings subsidiary.
It would be operated in similar fashion to the council's main commercial asset, Ports of Auckland, by an independent board of directors.
But Auckland Chamber of Commerce chief executive Mike Barnett, leader of the Citizens and Ratepayers team on the regional council, said new legislation promised by the Government would give the Auckland Regional Transport Authority more power to set performance standards and achieve better value from subsidised bus operators.
Infratil director Tim Brown, whose NZ Bus subsidiary has just spent $7 million on a 20-vehicle upgrade of central Auckland's Link service, said the proposal could jeopardise a case for greater Government financial support for public transport in the region.
He said bus companies had faced hefty recent cost rises, with limited ability to recover these from fare increases, while subsidies remained considerably lower than in other countries such as Australia and the United States.
