5-5-5/A consumer's bus strike solution.

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UPDATE
Alan Thompson, ARTA's Chief Executive, has told me of the travails of Canberra's bus system ACTion (where he was before taking up his current appointment last year). They tinkered with the fare price for years but fare revenue stayed static. So maybe the fare structure is more of a blunt, threatening instrument than originally intended. He was startled to learn that there has never been any rail feasibility study for the North Shore. Welcome to Auckland, cobber - our motto again: "planning for yesterday - tomorrow."
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"There's a rule of thumb in this business," Ian assuredly told me. He wasn't the Operations Director at Stagecoach, but might as well have been, "If your fares go up 10% you lose 3% of your passengers." Well, how sensitive. Far more than I had bargained on.

He said the annual fare structure review - due in August - would probably take the wage increase and diesel costs into consideration - and push the fares. Up about 10 cents. He was very skeptical that any fare increase would be welcomed - neutral at best and possibly damaging at worse. There was no anticipation of a price rise after that for three years anyway. So maybe the 5-5-5 (5% increase in fares-In 2005-for 5 years) is doomed. It wll probably be 5%-in 2005-for 3 years, but then again they probably thought it would not go up after last year's 10 cent hike! Which was my original point with 5-5-5 - we, the consumers, are paying for that 5 year certainty rather than unknown annual increases.

The ARC could intervene at any rate to threaten Stagecoach by not adjusting the schedule or even move it downwards. As Ian said, "we could just walk away from the contract at that point." It could be brinkmanship all round if they decided to get heavy. What Stagecoach would lose another would gain. Since the ARC has the muscle under the Transport Services Licensing Act 1989 section 47 (2) to impose any manner of concession fares and the elusive universal ticketing/all-company bus passes it gives our representatives of metropolitan unity both a stick and a carrot. Any politician wanting to "get the buses back on the roads" cannot overlook these tools of persuasion.

Oh well, if it all turns to tears and the strikes roll on all winter and becomes an election issue or they need a circuit breaker in the future then they can dust off this 5-5-5 plan. The industrial dispute is more complex than just Stagecoach and the Tramways Union. The bus companies control the drivers wages, The ARC controls the subsidies and the fare schedule, the passengers control the fare revenue and the ratepayers control the ARC. Any one of these groups could act as a circuit breaker.

cc. ARC members