KEY POINTS:
North Shore commuters are becoming so attached to new "transferable" tickets that some are demanding the right to keep using them on the Auckland side of the Harbour Bridge.
NZ Bus is advising drivers to be diplomatic when explaining to passengers that the tickets introduced for services running through the Northern Busway are not valid for other bus connections in Auckland City and beyond.
The company's city depot manager, Gavin Cook, has disclosed in a staff newsletter obtained by the Herald that some passengers of its North Star buses are arriving in Auckland and then trying to get aboard other services without buying more tickets.
"We realise that drivers are struggling to get the message out without inflaming the situation," Mr Cook said in the newsletter.
He told the drivers to keep trying to get the message across but, if they found conversations becoming "heated", they should let passengers on to buses for free.
Company spokesman Steve Wade confirmed that some difficulties had arisen since the introduction of tickets able to be transferred between different bus services and operators in North Shore City, and valid for travel from there to central Auckland.
He accepted that expectations may have been raised by the Auckland Regional Transport Authority's inclusion of limited rail travel in the deal, giving ticket-holders the right to travel to Britomart by bus and then catch trains for no extra cost as far as Kingsland, Glen Innes or Ellerslie.
The deal also covers buses run by Northern Express operator Ritchies Transport and Birkenhead Transport, as an interim step towards a fully integrated public transport ticket which the authority wants to introduce throughout the Auckland region in 2010.
