Release: Metlink Avoids Accountability

Metlink has been dodging responsibility and accountability for the poor outcomes of its bus network. We at Better Buses Ōwhiro Bay have spent the past year advocating on behalf of the forgotten suburb of Ōwhiro Bay for better bus services. We have had the opportunity to meet with Metlink twice to discuss our issues and form an ongoing relationship between us. These meetings have bred further discussion throughout the last year. These discussions have had two main focuses: The distribution methodology of bus services in the network, and a possible extension of Route 1 to cover Ōwhiro Bay.

In May 2024, council officers outlined an invitation for a meeting to discuss the model Metlink uses for distributing bus services across the network. This was not followed up on. In September of that same year, Cr Thomas Nash re-extended this same invitation, but again we have yet to hear further about this meeting 11 months after we were first invited. This meeting would have been a great opportunity for us to get an insight into Metlink’s systems and would breed further discussions on possible solutions for the issues faced by Ōwhiro Bay.

At that September meeting, Cr Nash also noted he would direct Metlink to investigate one of the recommendations in our report: The Route 1 Extension. This was done so by Metlink, and we obtained the documents under the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act 1987. After seeing them, we requested a meeting to discuss this further, but have since been outright denied the opportunity to meet.

“We are incredibly disappointed and concerned that Metlink has refused to meet with us on multiple occasions,” said Better Buses Ōwhiro Bay co-founder Arunan Noble. “Metlink, as a public organisation, should be accountable to the communities they serve. But their actions have shown that they aren’t willing to even entertain a discussion about the bus network.”

This follows a sorry trend of Metlink failing to be accountable or even communicative to the Ōwhiro Bay community. Earlier this year, they failed to communicate the indefinite cancellation of changes to Routes 29 & 39 that would have had a positive impact on Ōwhiro Bay commuters.

“Advocacy groups are important for highlighting issues that may be overlooked by government agencies. The fact that Metlink is willing to ignore us, despite the serious problems they have inflicted on Ōwhiro Bay, shows that they aren’t willing to accept any criticism and don’t care about Ōwhiro Bay residents. It is incredibly concerning.”

“We are calling on Metlink to accept our requests for a meeting, so we can have an honest, good-faith discussion about the very serious public transport issues that affect Ōwhiro Bay,” Noble said.

Release: Metlink Misleads Community

Metlink has misled the residents of Ōwhiro Bay. For the last year, we at Better Buses Ōwhiro Bay have been tirelessly advocating for the residents of Ōwhiro Bay. After 6 years of horrific bus service levels, we deserve better. In the Better Buses Ōwhiro Bay Report, we recommended eight changes that Metlink must implement for the bus services in Ōwhiro Bay to be equitable and proportional. This has, unfortunately, fallen on deaf ears.

In a meeting between Better Buses Ōwhiro Bay, the Ōwhiro Bay Residents’ Association, Green Party Regional Councillors, and Julie Anne Genter MP, it was mentioned that changes would be made to the bus network. The briefing paper for the Councillors prominently displayed that changes would be implemented. These changes were the realisation of one of the recommendations in our report: In January 2025, Metlink would remove the nonsensical short-run services of Route 29, restore the 15:38 service of Route 29, as well as re-arranging the timetables of Routes 29 & 39 to better reflect journey times. These changes, although small, would make a real difference to Ōwhiro Bay residents and would be a major positive step forward in getting better buses for Ōwhiro Bay. However, this has not come to pass.

These changes were promised to be implemented in January, but January has been and gone and these changes have yet to be implemented. When asked, Metlink has placed the blame on the operators, citing "operator negotiations", negotiations one would expect to have been finalised before such a definitive promise was made. This follows a sorry trend that since the publication of our report, Metlink has consistently, when faced with scrutiny, placed blame on the bus operators for their own institutional failures. They have misled Ōwhiro Bay residents by promising improvement and failing to deliver.

Metlink must apologise to the community and explain why they made these promises despite not being able to implement them within their promised time frame.

We are calling on Metlink to apologise to the community and implement these changes as soon as possible, along with the rest of our report's recommendations.

Release - 27 August 2024

With the release of this year’s Metlink Passenger Satisfaction Survey, Metlink and the Greater Wellington Regional Council have forgotten one major group - Ōwhiro Bay residents.

“Metlink is continuing to fail the people of Ōwhiro Bay. Although overall satisfaction throughout the network has increased, Ōwhiro Bay residents still receive the worst bus services in Wellington City, and, therefore, are utterly dissatisfied with the bus network,” said Better Buses Ōwhiro Bay co-founder Arunan Noble.

“79% of Wellingtonians are satisfied with the bus network according to the Metlink Passenger Satisfaction Survey. Comparatively, the report published by Better Buses Ōwhiro Bay found that 84% of Ōwhiro Bay residents are dissatisfied with the bus network in Ōwhiro Bay with 27% of those being ‘very dissatisfied.’ Despite this shocking statistic, Metlink continues to ignore the struggles of Ōwhiro Bay residents.

“They continue to celebrate the high level of satisfaction within the overall network while failing to even acknowledge both the institutional and operational issues that plague Ōwhiro Bay. Wellington can not have a successful public transport network if Ōwhiro Bay continues to receive 57% less bus services than it needs.

“We are calling on Metlink to implement the eight recommendations in the Better Buses Ōwhiro Bay report to restore community trust and satisfaction in the network and create a fit-for-purpose bus network across the entirety of Wellington city” Arunan Noble said.

Press Release - 28 April 2024

The public bus network in Wellington has failed the people of Ōwhiro Bay. As a small community of just over 2,000 people in the south of Wellington, we are not provided the bus services a suburb of our size requires. The current services provided by Metlink and the Greater Wellington Regional Council have done in the past and continue today to significantly underdeliver and under-represent our suburb.

In 2018, Metlink implemented a significant redesign to the bus network in Wellington in the form of a hub-and-spoke model. In the time since, Ōwhiro Bay’s availability of routes and their reliability has been unable to compete with those seen in neighbouring suburbs. This has resulted in Ōwhiro Bay, a suburb that is not a hub, being left by the wayside regarding bus services.

Before the 2018 bus network redesign, two bus routes serviced Ōwhiro Bay, Routes 4 and 29. The changes made in 2018 resulted in replacements and alterations to both of these services. Ōwhiro Bay’s main road, Happy Valley Road, was bypassed altogether in favour of extending the new routes to the Brooklyn Hub. Route 4 was disestablished and in its place, the 29e was created (a route which has since been replaced by the 39), an exclusively on-peak service. These changes were supposed to increase the levels of both on and off-peak service to Ōwhiro Bay. However, Ōwhiro Bay has seen a disproportionate deterioration in on-peak bus frequency. While suburbs like Houghton Bay, Lyall Bay, and Strathmore Park have seen increases in their on-peak services’ frequency, Ōwhiro Bay’s has only continued to get worse at a rate and level not seen anywhere else in Wellington city, seeing a 60% decrease in on-peak bus service availability when compared to pre-2018 levels.

Since then, the issue has only got worse. 2023 was not an easy year for the bus network; frequent cancellations and suspensions resulted in major disruptions and bus shortages for the vast majority of Wellingtonians. Ōwhiro Bay, however, received a disproportionate number of suspensions compared to other suburbs during this time. The 39, Ōwhiro Bay’s only peak-hours service, had almost 30% of its daily services suspended during the shortages. Route 39 was proportionally the most affected bus route during the 2023 shortages, despite being an exclusively on-peak service and the only one to service our suburb. This heavily impacted commuters' ability to get to and from work.

Ōwhiro Bay currently is the worst suburb for bus services in Wellington. A suburb should have bus services proportional to its population; this would ensure equal access to public transport for all residents no matter where they live. We have analysed 32 suburbs in Wellington City and have found this to be true throughout the network. The only exception to this trend is Ōwhiro Bay. A suburb with a population of just over 2,000 people, receives 57% fewer bus services in a day than should be expected. Ōwhiro Bay needs to have better bus services.

Having conducted public surveying throughout the suburb, we know that residents are incredibly frustrated and dissatisfied with the bus service. The significant lack of service has resulted in Ōwhiro Bay residents using private modes of transport despite there being a far greater desire to take the bus when compared to other suburbs. There is no reason for this to be the case. Ōwhiro Bay has a large population that wants to use the bus network but cannot due to the abysmal service.

We are calling on Metlink and the Greater Wellington Regional Council to rectify these issues and adopt all the recommendations in our Report on the bus network in Ōwhiro Bay.

- Better Buses Ōwhiro Bay