Wellington bus users getting ripped off

Tony Randle has set up a blog about Wellington commuting. He is a data expert who goes through detailed accounts and info on public transport spending.

In his first post he highlights how GWRC has saved $18.6 million on bus contracts but instead of lowering fares, they’ve used it on rail which had a $17.9 million blow out.

In his second post he calculates that 9% of bus fare revenue is used to subsidise rail fares. User fares are meant to cover 55% to 60% of the costs of a service. But rail users are paying just under 50% of their costs and bus users over 59%. So GWRC will be breaching their own policies.

The real scandal is nowhere have they been upfront on this. Randle has had to go the Ombudsman to get the data released.

In his third post he exposes how GRWC reclassified $9.5 million of rail capital expenditure as operating expenditure to justify fare increases.

The combination of the three posts show that GWRC has a lot to answer for. Local territorial authorities and media should be holding them to account.