Recent cuts to bus services due to a major skills shortage cast an unhealthy pall on a public transport system still trying to regain the patronage of pre-pandemic years
It’s not an easy time to be at Auckland Transport.
Tommy Parker, head of Auckland’s light rail project, revealed this weekend that he'd quit the board, seemingly following the very public advice given by new mayor Wayne Brown.
Parker follows former Auckland Transport chair Adrienne Young-Cooper, who stood down the very night Wayne Brown took the mayoralty.
And on top of these personnel changes, or perhaps as a cause of them, is a laundry list of challenges the council-controlled organisation currently faces.
A shortage of bus drivers in Auckland has risen by more than 300 percent compared to pre-Covid times, right at a time when Auckland Transport is trying to attract people back onto the busways.
Current driver numbers are at 78 percent of what it says is required, a fact which saw 1000 services cancelled earlier this week.
That amounts to 1,772 drivers currently under the employ of Auckland bus operators, with a shortfall of 509.
But while it’s a big number of services to cut in one fell swoop, Auckland Transport said there is still plenty of capacity in the public transport system due to low patronage that has yet to recover from the years of lockdowns and Covid restrictions.
Overall patronage is currently at just two-thirds of what it was in the same week back in 2019.
Recovery had come in fits and starts for the city’s myriad transport systems, with Auckland Transport reporting 47 million passenger boardings for the year to September 2022 - a decrease of almost a quarter on the year prior.
It seems Covid and the litany of global problems over the past few years - pandemic restrictions, a cost-of-living crisis and widespread labour shortages due to shut borders - hit Auckland’s transport system just when it was truly starting to hit its stride.
The highest year for patronage was the year to September 2019, when passenger boardings for the year reached almost 100 million.
Auckland Transport’s goal for the next year is to reach 60 percent of that, with its annual report giving a statement of intent of 59 million passenger boardings.
Looking specifically at bus services, there were 35.7 million rides in the year to this September, which was a 22.7 percent decrease on the year before that.
So how significant is cutting 1000 services a day?
That adds up to about 8 percent of total services. However, the nature of different bus operators covering different parts of the city and the intricacies of their routes mean not all suburbs will be affected equally.
Auckland Transport spokesperson Sam Stephenson said: “We will still be running around 12,000 bus trips a day and will be adding services back to our timetables as soon as bus operators are able to recruit more drivers”.
Funding support from Auckland Council, Waka Kotahi and central government to increase pay for drivers will help to fill in the skills gaps, he said.
“There have been some positive movements around bus driving as a vocation, benefitting both existing drivers and supporting recruitment drives,” he said. “With funding support from Auckland Council and Waka Kotahi, there has been two recent increases in base remuneration for drivers with a further increase through government funding announced on 30 October.”
Last week Minister of Transport Michael Wood announced $61 million in funding to go towards a pay bump for drivers, with the hope of attracting fresh talent to the role as well as keeping current drivers happy in their places behind the steering wheel.
It’s a deal open to regional transport authorities around the country to aid with country-wide difficulties in attracting and retaining those drivers.
“Our Government is committed to making it more affordable, easier and attractive for Kiwis to use public transport, so it’s crucial we have the drivers in place to get the system moving,” Wood said.
“Improving the conditions of drivers will make it easier to recruit and retain the workforce, allowing frequent and reliable bus services.”
Wood’s deal will support standardising minimum base wage rates towards a target rate across the transport sector, aiming for $30 per hour for urban services and $28 per hour for regional services.
But while cities like Wellington are in need of 120 drivers, which has seen just under 70 services put on hold in the capital, it seems the problem in Auckland is almost of another order of magnitude.
And while $61 million from the Government’s budget is nothing to scoff at, Auckland Transport spent $187 million on wages and salaries in the last year.
A good 12,000 daily services still run in Auckland, but longer waits at bus stops and more difficult timing of transfers can only have one impact on the appetite of Aucklanders to reach for their Hop cards.
Indeed on a sunny Friday afternoon in early November, a trip from the CBD to Papatoetoe by bus will take just over two hours, provided the five-minute transfer window in Onehunga goes smoothly.
At the same time, even with congested highways, a trip from the city to Papatoetoe via the Waterview Tunnel is forecast to take just over 40 minutes.
It should be noted with skyrocketing fuel prices that the $2.70 bus trip to the southern part of the city is likely to be easier on the wallet. Fuel cost calculators put the trip out at $7.80 for petrol.
While better pay for the drivers will help paper over the current cracks - and help a large group of blue collar workers better deal with the heightened cost of living - it remains to be seen whether it’s enough of a cash injection to turn around ailing patronage.
