Wellington City Bus Review Stakeholder Consultation External Report Prepared by Premium Research for: Greater Wellington Regional Council March 2011 Table of Contents 1.0 Introduction................................................................................................................................3 1.1 Background.............................................................................................................................3 1.2 This Report..............................................................................................................................3 2.0 Approach ....................................................................................................................................4 3.0 Findings – Organisations..............................................................................................................6 3.1 Travel and Leisure Sector ........................................................................................................6 3.2 Businesses and Business Organisations ...................................................................................7 3.3 Health Organisations...............................................................................................................8 3.4 Tertiary Education Institutions ..............................................................................................11 4.0 Findings – Bus Drivers ...............................................................................................................13 5.0 Findings – User Groups..............................................................................................................15 5.1 Workplace Travel Planners....................................................................................................15 5.2 User Representatives............................................................................................................16 5.3 Public Consultation Focus Group...........................................................................................17 5.4 Disability Focus Group...........................................................................................................19 5.5 Rita Angus Retirement Village Residents ...............................................................................20 5.6 Malvina Major Retirement Village Residents .........................................................................21 6.0 Conclusions...............................................................................................................................22 Appendix 1 ............................................................................................................................................24 Appendix 2 ............................................................................................................................................26 2 1.0 Introduction 1.1 Background Greater Wellington has an ongoing programme of area-wide public transport service reviews, in accordance with policies laid out in the Regional Passenger Transport Plan. The programme requires that all scheduled passenger transport services be reviewed at least once every five years, to ensure that they continue to meet the needs of the community and reflect any changes such as shifts in demand. These reviews are not a statutory requirement. Area-wide reviews provide an opportunity to maximise the effectiveness and efficiency of the public transport network within a larger geographical area. They take a short to medium term view, focus on operational improvements to the network, and look to achieve these within existing public transport budgets. The Wellington City Bus Review (initially named the Wellington Public Transport Review) commenced in 2009 and is planned for completion in 2011. It encompasses the urban areas of Wellington City, south of Takapu Road in Grenada North. The review focuses on bus services, and their integration with rail services (particularly the Johnsonville railway line), harbour ferry services within Wellington, and the cable car. 1.2 This Report This report documents the findings of the stakeholder consultation task of the Initial Consultation Stage of the review. It supplements the findings of the public consultation task. The findings will be used to determine public perceptions of public transport issues and needs, and guide possible changes to services. Greater Wellington has separately undertaken direct consultation with: • Wellington City Council • Public transport operators • Greater Wellington’s Ara Tahi inter-iwi representative group • Residents and progressive associations • High schools. The findings of the consultation undertaken exclusively by Greater Wellington are not included in this report. 3 2.0 Approach Stakeholder consultation was undertaken between November 2009 and February 2010. Greater Wellington identified the stakeholders to include in the review and commissioned Premium Research to facilitate the consultation. Premium Research, generally accompanied by Greater Wellington, met with each of the stakeholders and facilitated a discussion about Wellington public transport. The discussion guides used for these sessions are included as Appendix 1 and 2 to this document. Stakeholders consulted as part of this process were divided into three groups: organisations with an interest in public transport, bus drivers, and user groups. Discussions with organisations followed an interview format, whilst those with bus drivers and user groups used a discussion group or workshop format. The organisations consulted with were: • Wellington International Airport • Positively Wellington Tourism • New Zealand Retailers Association • Wellington Regional Chamber of Commerce • Regional Public Health • Capital Coast and District Health Board • Capital Coast and District Health Maori Partnership Board • Hutt Valley District Health Board • Victoria University of Wellington • Massey University • Sport Wellington • Park Road Post (representing the Miramar-based film industry). With the exception of a telephone discussion with Sport Wellington, discussions with each stakeholder were in person and took between 30 and 90 minutes to conduct. Bus driver workshops were held with: • Go Wellington bus drivers • Mana/Newlands bus drivers. User group workshops were held with: • Workplace travel planners • User representatives • A public consultation focus group • A disability focus group • Malvina Major Retirement Home residents • Rita Angus Retirement Home residents. The discussion groups with retirement home residents were held at their place of residence. The discussion groups with users and disability representatives were held at the Regional Council Centre. 4 The interviews took between one and two hours to conduct. Most interviews and discussion groups were audio recorded, with permission of the participants. In a few instances discussions were recorded by note-taking. 5 3.0 Findings – Organisations 3.1 Travel and Leisure Sector Tourists to Wellington are perceived as making little use of public transport, because it is difficult to understand how to access places of interest using public transport and because most tourists either do solely city-based activities or have access to private transport. There are perceived gaps in: • Public transport links between the wharves that cruise ships use and the central city • Public transport serving Zealandia, the Zoo, and city destinations • Public transport serving the Airport - The Airport Flyer (‘the Flyer’) is limited to just one route, which has limited hours of service and does not always run to schedule. This sector perceives that the key constraints preventing the provision of a good public transport service for Wellington are the limitations of the road network. The key issue is perceived to be delays in traffic flow in the following places: • Golden Mile • Hataitai • Evans Bay intersection • Newtown • Basin Reserve • Constable Street. There is a perception that there will be an increase in demand for public transport services from this sector in the future, particularly for access to the airport. The increased demand will be driven by a substantial increase in people travelling through the airport (forecast to be as high as double the current number of people within 20 years), and the difficulty of providing additional car parking facilities to match this increase. Consideration may therefore need to be given to such enhancements as: • Expanding the current Airport Flyer Service – hours of service and routes (i.e. Hutt Valley, Island Bay, Porirua and the Kapiti Coast) • Extending other public transport services to incorporate the airport • Potentially light rail. There is a perception from the sector that demand for public transport to access participation in sport facilities will increase over time – largely as a result of population growth and the resulting increase in congestion of main thoroughfares. Possible (but currently unsubstantiated) issues may be: • Access to the Hataitai netball courts using public transport • Access to the new sporting facility in Kilbirnie using public transport • Increasing congestion in weekend traffic in the main thoroughfares in the eastern suburbs • Access to participating in sport for people who do not have access to a car. 6 3.2 Businesses and Business Organisations Public transport is considered to be an important issue for organisations representing businesses. The business organisations are lobbied