Public Transport and whoring it to private business.
Brian Rudman writes a brilliant column today in the Herald about the mickey mouse Privatization of public transport that Auckland was forced into adopting under National 15 years ago. Public Transport has been raped in Auckland with merchant bankers Infratil reaping public subsidy for fuck all service….
When Infratil bought the old Stagecoach Bus company in 2005, patronage in the year to June was 43.1 million passenger trips. A year later, the service had shed 900,000 passenger trips. By the year ended June 2007, a further 200,000 passengers had disappeared.
It took a war in Iraq and rocketing fuel prices to reverse this downward trend. In the year to June 2008, passenger numbers bounced back to 2005 levels. In that time though, subsidy payouts soared. When Infratil entered the scene, public handouts to regional bus operators totalled $45 million. Just five years on, the budgeted annual subsidy has more than doubled to $93.1 million.
As ARC chairman Mike Lee wryly noted in a letter to Transport Minister Annette King this year, "It would appear that the private bus companies in Auckland are much more interested in increasing bus subsidies than increasing passenger numbers."
…indeed they do. Privatizing our public transport has been a complete failure and with National wanting MORE not less privatization in roading, the fear is that the mistakes of the past will spill over into public transport once again.
posted by Bomber @ 10:54 AM
4 comments
4 Comments:
Then lets ditch the subsidies.
I agree, Bomber. This model is a failed model and national want to make it their default model. Mike Lee hit the nail on the head: It's about maximising profit, not growing and enabling more and better public transport.
I've seen excellent public transport systems and not ONE of them was based on a private model. The lesson of Auckland and rail here innNZ and in the UK is that when you go private with infrastructure it's far too often only a matter of time before the wheels fall of.
Leaving aside whether travel on public transport should be subsidised or self funding, which is a separate issue.
If local or regional councils outsource the running of their public transport systems to private business then the contracts should have penalty clauses built in (i.e. only x% of journeys should be more than 5 minutes late or you lose $x from the contract, you must grow passenger numbers x% a year, or x% of revenue from profitable commuter runs should be used to provide a service outlying districts, etc. etc.)
Why don't councils build this into the contracts already? I'd have to say if they don't they are very naive, a business to business contract has all sorts of clauses and penalties built in, why don't business to local authority contracts?
No need to throw the baby out with bathwater, public/private partnership have the potential to work for both the public good and the businesses bottom line if done properly.
Hmmm
Is advocating an ideologically driven solution to transport while paying no attention to the real costs is not going to be accepted by the public.
Aucklanders had threee years of Hubbard cranking up their council rates above the rate of inflation and threw him out to bring Banksie.
You can make trite comments like "growing and enabling more and better public transport" but really it's meaningless twaddle without the numbers to support it.
Post a Comment
<< Home