Petition to have an Independent Commissioner look into the Bus Network Changes

Lim from Northland

Dear Wellington Community,
It is now week 9 of the new bus network introduction. And soon we will be into 3 months since launch. The new network has caused serious inconvenience and in quite a lot of cases severe hardships for the Wellington Community.

For the public, the old network is always going to be the benchmark of service levels. Why would anyone want to spend millions of dollars putting in a fancy new network which is going to make life so much more difficult for people?

To put things in perspective, after 4 public meetings (with over a thousand people attending) and thousands of complaints since launch, we now have 2 peak time buses added to the Karori route, a Bus 18 reinstatement announcement which will not take effect for another 3 months and a very minor schedule change for the Eastern suburb. These changes probably represent less than 5% of returning to the service levels of the old network. Furthermore, thousands were providing feedback for 4 years during the consultation round prior to launch.

Are we going to need 200 more public meetings and 8 more years to just return to the old service levels? Personally, I am fast losing faith in the Regional Council’s capability in looking after public interests and making any rapid and meaningful improvements.

To be able to move forward, GWRC first must acknowledge that they have got the network design wrong. There is none of that, instead what we are seeing is more PR Spin, face saving, shifting blames and expecting people to live with the ‘new normal”.

In some developing countries a change of this magnitude which has so negatively impact the life of the people would have caused civil unrest and public riots. However, we live in a democratic country and there are democratic processes to follow to effect changes. There is already a petition urging the government to appoint an independent commissioner to examine the impact of recent changes in Wellington's public transport network. Perhaps it is time we take this petition seriously …

www.parliament.nz...

cc: Angela Stewart Nicole Martin-Lupp Jill Matthews Beckie Alexander Liz Parsons Joy Thorp Corinne Rivoallan Richard Elwin Vaughan Crimmins Patricia Thompson Linnette Horne Leoni Hawkins