The Wellington bustastrophe

Dave Armstrong writes:

J’accuse! I do not wake up in the morning wanting to write about buses. Frankly, there are more interesting things in life. Like most Wellingtonians, I just want to get a bus if I need to without any drama. But it’s nearly a month now, guys, and your service is shocking.

If you were a bank I would be changing, if you were a tradesperson I’d be warning people not to use you, if you were on a 90-day contract I would fire you. But I can’t because you are the bustastrophe, the balls-up, the clusterbus known as the New Wellington Bus System.

Tell us what you think Dave.

We are now in our fourth week of “Not in Service”. The buses have not “settled in”, if the tidal wave of complaints on social media are anything to go by. These are, according to Wellington city councillor Dianne Calvert, “systemic not ‘teething’ issues”.

It seems we have a structural problem based on badly planned routes, badly written contracts and ridiculous timetables that make passengers feel as though services have been slashed. At the hub of the problem are hubs, which, while great in theory (try the London Tube or Paris Metro if you don’t believe me), need a critical mass of buses to work, and that mass isn’t there.

A good change programme would have included market research of customers and potential customers about what they want.