FAQ 1

A local resident emailed me with a number of questions. Here are the questions, and my answers:

1. it's a unidirectional service at peak times with return buses using the existing roads (from the Council site - that answered my question about how two-way bus flow could be accommodated - evidently it can't, or at least not at peak times. It will still be vulnerable to the effects of weather and congestion because the return buses may not get back to the start point in time to start their next journey in time. Correct?

Technically correct, yes. But in practice, because the return journey is in the opposite direction to peak traffic flows, it will suffer relatively little congestion.

2. is the plan to send the equivalents of all 53, 54, 55, 56, 57 buses along the busway? If together they make up a 3-5 minute frequency, how will that be better for Churton Park than the current 5 minute frequency of 54s during the morning peak and 10 minute freuqency in the evening? I'm assuming that Northern Suburbs residents to the east of the motorway will benefit from the busway - is that correct?

I don’t think Churton Park residents will get better frequency of service, just better reliability. I.e. a bus journey always takes about the same amount of time, without unpredictable delays due to congestion. I’d expect the journey duration, during peak times, to be approximately the same as current off peak journey times.

3. what is the reasonable expectation for peak journey times, given that a bus would stop at existing stops in the suburbs and then at each existing railway station? Where (if anywhere) could we expect the bus to get up to 100kph as they are claimed to do in Adelaide?

My memory of the council documents is a little hazy on this point. [The documents are available here.] My expectation is that buses serving J’Ville West, Churton Park, Newlands, Grenada North etc will not stop on the busway during peak periods. I.e. they will run as express services from J’Ville. As I recall, the stations on the busway route will be designed so express buses can pass buses which are stopped to load passengers.

4. If this proposal is accepted and the bus company thereby removes at a stroke its only significantly cheaper competition, how long before it exercises its monopoly by raising fares as high as it dares? If its only remaining competition is the private car and we include petrol and parking fees in the total expense of using the car, the bus company would have a lot of leeway to raise fares.

My impression is that both rail and bus prices are currently set after extensive consultation with the regional council, with the council’s level of subsidy having a large effect on the price. I.e. even now, it is not a pure competitive market. While the demise of rail may give the bus company some extra leverage in negotiations with the council, I think the situation will be closer to a regulated, subsidized monopoly than a pure monopoly. Obviously, the situation you describe already exists in all other Wellington suburbs (i.e. everything south of the Ngaio Gorge) because in all those areas Stagecoach is the sole operator. The council must regulate Stagecoach's fares, and they must be doing a fairly good job. Why? Because a month’s worth of Stagecoach travel costs $65. A months worth of travel on Newlands can cost as much as $120! (That’s 5 sections each way, every day, for a typical month) So the operator with competition is over 80% more expensive than the operator without!