KEY POINTS:
Sometimes the people running this town don't seem to remember what day yesterday was.
On Monday, assorted regional transport worthies joined together to launch the rebranding of Infratil's 120 North Shore and Hibiscus Coast public passenger bus fleet. To be called the North Star service, the buses will be rebranded in blues and yellows.
Two weeks before, the same company unveiled a new livery - in shades of slime green and yellow - for the region's most successful public transport innovation in decades, the inner city Link service.
Yet just five years ago, 32 leading New Zealand and Australian design and architectural companies battled through a six-month branding and themeing contest to come up with a unifying brand for Auckland's transport system.
The brief from the regional transport network was clear. "To identify a single visual identity for use for all branding and themeing for buses, rail, ferries and stations across the entire public transport system."
The winning entry was Maxx - short for Metropolitan Auckland XXpressways, that featured a dark blue livery which, according to the designers, Auckland-based Sanders Design/Stephenson & Turner, was bold and confident and expressed the personality of metropolitan Auckland.
Part of the package was a pesky cartoon pukeko called Maxx which the judging panel saw as a "cheerful character to introduce the brand".
A press release declared the decision had the full support of the region through the Auckland Regional Council's passenger transport committee and that the branding would be introduced over five years.
A parallel themeing competition to ensure consistent design of bus stops and rail stations soon fell by the wayside but the reasoning behind the branding exercise seemed so obvious that making it happen seemed accepted as one of the essentials of getting a good, inter-linked public transport system up and running.
The only obstacle was the biggest bus operator, Stagecoach, and now its successor, Wellington-based investment company Infratil. Both, in turn, have decided to promote their brand at the expense of the greater good. What is most disappointing is that the regional bus agencies, first the regional transport network and now the Auckland Regional Transport Authority, have consistently buckled to this two-fingered rejection of the regional branding mission.
Infratil Public Transport managing director Bill Rae said yesterday that it hasn't ignored Maxx, that the Maxx livery, with contact details, will appear right by the door in a sign "about a square foot". Which will be okay for those with a magnifying glass, but hardly helps persuade the customer they're part of an integrated transport network.
Transport authority chief executive Fergus Gammie said on Monday that every operator had "a right to brand their service, and there is a regional brand Maxx which operators need to work with".
Fair enough, but what's being proposed for the North Star and Link services as far as Maxx is concerned is a joke. Particularly as the buses on the parallel North Shore service, the Northern Express, are predominantly liveried with the Maxx brand, with just a token acknowledgement of Ritchies, the operators of that service.
Like the Maxx-labelled suburban trains, this comes about as a condition of the contract with the transport authority. Which begs the question, why doesn't the authority insist on similar "mostly Maxx" clause in all its contracts?
Martin Cahnbley, who headed the ARC's branding and themeing project in 2001, says he's disappointed. "The thought was always that Maxx would be the overall brand and then you could have sub-brands within that. Otherwise it's not connected."
People need to be able to stand at a bus stop and recognise a bus as belonging to the network.
"If we're starting to fragment all the brands again, you'll never be able to market one system to people."
Design contest winner Alan Sanders is equally upset. "The buses are the glue that holds the whole branding exercise together, there's so many of them. If that doesn't happen and they introduce new brands then the whole Maxx brand becomes a bit obsolete. It seems a shame."
All it would take for the branding is a bit of backbone from the regional transport funders. But why would we expect that when they still can't get the Link bus to run at 10-minute intervals.
