About Me

There’s a great series of comments over on Tom’s WellUrban blog. I don’t know quite where to being in answering them all, but for starters, I’ll reply to some questions about me:

Simon asked: John, I am curious as to the motivations behind you pro-bus stance. I ask, not as a slant against any bias you may hold - everyone no matter how objective they attempt to be has their biases. However in all the continued debate around the Northern transport study your name keep surfacing [and a good thing too, we are well short of people who care enough to speak out!] .

Do you have any connection to the bus and coach industry? I know you attempt to introduce facts in your arguments however you seem very reluctant to look at or address both points of view -or indeed a wider context.

First, let me offer a partial apology for offering a one-sided point of view. I have a lot of other pressures on my time at the moment (for personal reasons which I won’t go into here). So, I have to be selective; I simply don’t have time to cover everything. As I’ve said before, I started blogging because only one side of the story was being told (rail). So naturally, my limited time is focused on the side that nobody else was telling (bus).

I have no connections to the bus and coach industry. In fact, if you look at my Blogger profile, or type my name into Google, you’ll see I’m a computer geek at a software company. Neither me nor my employer have anything to do with the transport industry.

I don’t like your suggestion that I have a pro-bus bias. Accuse me of having a pro-public-transport bias, and you’d be right. I want public transport solutions that work well. In the case of the Northern Suburbs, we can have two parallel systems – a rail system that works well and a bus one that works badly – or we can combine them and get one solution that works well for everybody. On that basis, I support the combined solution, which is the busway.

In contexts where I believe rail is the best public transport option, such as the Western Corridor, I support it. (Here are some extracts from my written submission on the Western Corridor Plan.)

Finally, let me point out that on some occasions I’ve been a vocal critic of Newlands bus service. For instance, in 2000 their changes to route 54 added greatly to journey times for many residents. I debated this point with Newlands representatives at a Community Association meeting; conducted a mail drop to affected residents; and contacted the Regional Council about the matter. I’m pleased to see that they now plan to reverse the change. (See the route 54 comments in the latest Scenarios documents).

As I’ve said before, I’m just a guy who’s sick of sitting in traffic. If I have any other bias, it’s the firm belief that long journey times are bad for our society. Slow transport costs me hours each week with my daughter, and I know it does the same to hundreds of other working parents in the Northern Suburbs.

In the many hours I’ve spent sitting on buses, as they crawled down Nauranga Gorge, I’ve often wished for something like the busway – something which would give fast, reliable public transport to everyone in the Northern Suburbs. When people choose public transport, which is best for society and the environment, we should reward them with a quick, reliable service. We should not let public transport be sabotaged by those who choose not to use it, driving their cars and holding up buses on the Gorge. Instead, we should take the buses out of the Gorge.

(The resulting bus service will be quick and reliable. It might even be attractive to some of those car drivers!)