Karori Bus Meeting Minutes (Unofficial) - 30Aug18

Lim from Northland

Hi All,

For those who were unable to attend the Karori Bus meeting, I have captured the following comments from the meeting. Close to 30 - 40 people were talking so the "minutes" is best attempt.

GWRC does not seem to have any plan to address fundamental issues or any urgency to fix anything. Time to keep up the pressure!
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Karori Public meeting last night. Please feel free to repost …

Attendance is at least 300 people as reported by RNZ . It is standing room only. I believe it is more like 400 people. Close to 30 - 40 people were speaking and GWRC only got 10 mins at the end to sum up. Daran Ponter was summing up instead of Chris Laidlaw.

In attendance:

GWRC: Chris Laidlaw. Daran Ponter , Sue Kedgley , Ian McKinnon, Roger Blakeley, Wayne Hastie (GM of Transport)

WCC: Simon Woolf, Diane Calvert, Sarah Free

Central Government: Grant Robertson, Nicola Willis

Salient points raised at the meeting:

• GWRC has never able to convince the public that the old network was so bad that it needs to be replaced with this new fancy network which simply does not work.

• The debacle caused serious hardships and inconvenience for commuters. People are missing important appointments, late to work, take forever to get home. Mothers can’t pick up their kids after schools. Stress level is so high it is not funny. In some areas of Karori, buses simply have been cut. This debacle is seriously affecting people’s livelihood.

• Donaldson’s email reply to the one person’s query on why seats on buses have been removed. It is by design to make it standing room because GWRC wanted to cramp more people in buses.

• Donaldson’s email reply on why buses are cut/reduced for Karori. “This is to balance up services to other areas”

• I raised the point on why GWRC is still insisting that the hub and spoke transport model is going to work when NONE of the pre-requisites are in place eg. multi-lane roads, dedicated bus lane, purposed built hub which provide safety and shelter and above all good time keeping .

• Overfull buses are a health and safety issue

• Having to do bus transfers for short distances is insane.

• A number of people mentioned Bus 22 which no longer go to the CBD and Wellington College causing hardships for people.

• Bus 18 to hospital is very important and it needs to be re-instated.

• Why are we not seeing any solution tomorrow? Why do we have to wait for 3 – 6 months?

• What’s wrong with the old network, why can’t we go back to the old network!

• People have grave concern about the competencies of GWRC’s Councillors and Management’s and calling on Central Government to step in.

• Public transport should be providing a good service to the public instead of a focus on cost cutting and profit generation.

• A significant number of people raised concerns about driver’s working conditions and the pressure that they have put under with this new network. It is accident waiting to happen.

• One person said it is an insult to see posted notes and white papers on the wall because Wellington people have been providing feedbacks to GWRC for over 4 years. Many felt ignored.

• No contingency plan and no roll back plan demonstrate arrogance and incompetence respectively

• Some people were late to meeting because their buses were late !

• People have asked councillors to resign immediately. My view is the management of GWRC is even more culpable to this debacle because it is the transport planners who design this flawed network in the first place (and the councillors sign it off)

• Nicola Willis made a point that she has captured unanswered questions and will hold GWRC to answers within a week.

• So much data is stored in the Snapper system. Why data analysis has not been done to provide a real world picture of the situation.

• Real time information not working

• Solutions will take time with loud boo and jeer from the crowd.

The panel of GWRC councillors and senior management were stony faced throughout the night. I am not convinced that GWRC is going to do something fundamental to fix the root cause of the design problem. So far it is all talk and no action !

I would like to thank the MC of the meeting, David Watt, Councillor Simon Woolf, Councillor Diane Calvert , MP Grant Robertson, MP Nicola Willis for making this meeting happen. Thanks also to Councillor Sarah Free from Eastern Ward attending in support of the Karori Meeting.