Auckland's self-inflicted public transport crisis has urgent lessons

Friday, 25 November 2022

NZ Bus drivers took to the streets in December 2019 as part of their strike action over working hours and pay. (Video from December 2019)

Todd Niall is the senior Auckland affairs reporter for Stuff.

ANALYSIS: There’s an old saying: “You get what you pay for” – and it applies to Auckland’s public transport crisis.

The staggered months-long shutdowns of three Auckland commuter rail lines in 2023 is a consequence of not rebuilding the city’s rail network from the foundations up.

While billions have been invested since the 1990s in double-tracking, electrification and new trains, the now-urgent missing piece was replacing the track foundations, underneath all that investment.

* Auckland still grappling with bus cancellations amid worker shortage

* Auckland's mayor calls the city's public transport 'a crisis'

Wellington bus drivers picket the Kilbirnie depot during their 24-hour strike in April 2021. (File photo)

The plight of the city’s bus network has been years, not decades in the making, with 1000 services a day now removed from timetables and up to 1100 cancelled at short notice due to a shortage of more than 500 drivers.

Just when Auckland needs to boost public transport nine-fold in just eight years, to reach carbon emission reduction targets, the system is in reverse with patronage stuck at 67% of pre-Covid levels.

Auckland’s bus network is running more than 2000 services fewer on some weekdays due to a driver shortage.

It is easy to blame the Covid-19 pandemic, a global shortage of labour or immigration settings for the country’s bus driver shortage, but the answer is more homegrown and well-flagged.

The revitalisation of Auckland’s bus network from 2016 was built on a new contracting environment, enabled by the Sir John Key-led National Government, the Public Transport Operating Model (PTOM).

It provided commercial incentives for private bus companies, and Auckland Transport built its “New Network” hub-and-spoke pattern through negotiations that it proudly claimed obtained more service for less public subsidy.

Labour costs are a major part of those contracts, and labour laws that allowed operators to spread a driver’s day over as many as 14 hours, with split shifts, helped keep the public costs lower.

The drivers’ unions have lobbied and campaigned for years for reform to improve drivers’ conditions. Despite the government creating a multi-sector working party in 2019, progress has been slow, although PTOM in its present form is on the way out.

For bus services, it mattered little while there were more people looking for jobs than there were jobs available. But inevitably that changed, and now with workers able to choose which job they will take, the long hours and assault-risk of bus driving mean the role is less sought after.

Auckland Council, Auckland Transport and the government did recognise the growing driver shortage and during 2022 and have funded three wage increases, with negotiation now under way on hours of work.

However, finding more than 500 bus drivers at a time of almost record low unemployment, and competition for good workers, will not be quite or easy. Ferry services face the same difficulty.

Frustration and a loss of confidence in a system where services are unreliable will be corrosive and could form new travel habits, such as driving, just at a time when the city needs to be halving motoring trips.

Back in 2016, as Auckland started to celebrate securing more bus services for the same or less money, few could have foreseen the crisis of 2022 and beyond.

As Auckland councillors and the mayor Wayne Brown wrestle with how to cut millions of dollars of services and costs – to balance the new year’s budget and a deficit of up to $295 million – they need to be alert to the long-term consequences of seeking more for less.

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