Is the fall of the Palace an opportunity for Auckland's rail aspirations?

Last week we saw the sad sight of the 124 year old Palace Hotel fall to the ground, seemingly as some 'reconstruction' work was going on. Auckland lost another piece of its history - it is unfortunate the CBD has so few such pieces left.

Yet when I heard the news a thought suddenly struck me - the site could be a key part of Auckland's future. On Thursday the Transport Committee of the new Auckland Council will meet. (Hat tip Jarbury) One of the first items on their agenda will be considering the business case for the CBD rail tunnel from Britomart to Mt Eden.

The Palace Hotel site would be perfect spot for a SkyCity entrance/exit to the proposed Aotea/Midtown underground railway station. It would be approximately 80 to 100 metres from the Midtown platform to the street. Given the capacity of this station is expected to be greater than Britomart it would make sense to have a greater number of exits to spread the foot traffic.

Say when they rebuilt the site they included a small underground retail precinct with a large 'subway' type entrance on the corner facing SkyCity. This could be linked up by underground pedestrian subway when Midtown station opens, and the retail alongside immediately gets a massive foot traffic boost. I imagine being able to get a escalator up that big hill from Queen Street would be pretty popular for pedestrians as well as rail users.

If the business case for the CBD rail tunnel works out as well as is expected, there should be no need to involve the private sector in a so called public private partnership. These are nothing new - its worth remembering all the private sector railways in 19th century England that were all bailed out by the Government. Instead I wish the Council look back to the mojo of Henry George and Julius Vogel, and look to fund rail projects by ensuring the public recapture the 'unearned increment' of those holding the land. Why should private enterprise privatise the benefit of public investment merely because they live next door?

Keeping these issues in mind doesn't even have to be particularly radical. At the very least there should be a developer levy with the funds going towards the rail tunnel.

The council could also look at buying strategic sites around the proposed stations and develop these areas with provision for their transport plans. Another thought - could we have the pedestrian subways we will need for Midtown before we get the station? The construction activity will help the Auckland economy in the downturn, and the ability for the council to make the leases dependent on the needs of the transport development could potentially lower overall long term costs and improve outcomes. Plus the fact the council could gain some of the benefits of the expected increase in property values once the station is operational.

Riding on the Singapore MRT last year it dawned on me how much easier and cheaper it must be to design and build an excellent public transport system when the Government owns 58% of the land (most land in Singapore is leased). Hopefully with the new Auckland Council in place and a spacial plan in development, some of the tragic planning mistakes will be rectified and Auckland's transport problems will improve. A lot of this puzzle is rethinking how we are using the land.

I hope the Council look at buying the Palace Hotel site - its in a useful location. Before the collapse the owners of the Palace Hotel were looking to reopen the building as a brothel. To end on a cheeky note, there seems no reason why the ground and underground floor of the new building could not be an entrance to Midtown station. Brothels usually don't want or need a high profile street entrance! That said, it is not a kind of establishment I have ever frequented!!

Bob Parker sets up sale of Red Bus company

No Right Turn has highlighted how the Government appointed review of Environment Canterbury is an undemocratic farmer coup against Canterbury ratepayers. Apparently its a failure not to allow farmers to fill Canterbury waterways with as much cow shit as they want, and the review panel are seeking to replace ECan with an unelected 'commission' to push through their agenda.

To make matters worse, the Government appointed Wyatt Creech to lead the review, despite his company Open Country Cheese being found guility for illegally polluting land, rivers and streams as a means to increase profit.

But there is another agenda at play here too, and Christchurch Mayor (Sideshow) Bob Parker appears to be right in the thick of it. Christchurch and Timaru city councils are looking to take control of the region's public transport from ECan, and due to ideologically driven restrictions of current legislation this would force the city council to sell the Red Bus Company. So Sideshow Bob is pushing privatisation by stealth.

Red Bus is currently 100% owned by Christchurch City Holdings, which acts as the holding company for Christchurch City Council's trading assets. Christchurch is currently the only major city in New Zealand which has true electronic integrated ticketing across all bus and ferry operators and this has been operational since 2003. Determining factors in this success are likely to be that the City Council owned the major bus company and that Stagecoach/Infratil never made it to Christchurch. In the case of integrated ticketing, ECan succeeded where other regional authorities failed.

This is what the review into ECAN says about the regional council's responsibilities for managing public transport.

"Christchurch City Council is strongly of the view that the present arrangement leads to material additional costs due to the overlaps in responsibility between Christchurch City and ECan, and that this resource would be better applied to improving public transport services. Rather than making specific recommendations to address perceived issues, the Review Group feels that it is appropriate that the Commission initiate a review to consider the optimum arrangement for the management and operation of the public transport fleet within the Region. The overwhelming bulk of this activity is within Christchurch, however we note that three other Districts are also serviced by public transport managed by ECan. The Commission we have recommended to replace ECan would act on that review when completed."

The same strategy is in effect. Remove an elected regional council and replace it with unelected commissioners who will be appointed by Ministers. No doubt they will give the big thumbs up to changes to transport management if a side effect happens to be the privatisation of Red Bus. This is being proposed at the same time Auckland is up in arms at proposals that Ministers will appoint the initial directors of Auckland Transport, under the new Super City arrangements, with the current proposed structure offering elected councillors very limited ability to represent their constituents on transport issues. The same strategy is in effect.

Citizens of the People's Republic of Christchurch will not want the bus company sold. Since a National Government in the 1990s forced the City Council to sell Southpower the citizens have fought off the privateers more successfully than in Auckland or Wellington.

In 2006 the Christchurch City Council proposed selling effective control of the Lyttelton Port Company to a Hong Kong Multinational Hutchison Port Holdings and their was a significant public outcry. The same year the Council removed Red Bus and its contracting business City Care from a list of strategic assets to be protected. While Hutchison thankfully decided to walk away from the deal, these changes were designed to clear the way for the privateers in the future.

Sideshow Bob must know that taking over control of transport will necessitate the sale of Red Bus. Not surprisingly he has not been upfront about this. Given Bob's previous mismanagement, some citizens will wonder if the expected proceeds from the sale of the company will end up propping up another one of David Henderson's dodgy property deals....

Why we need an Onehunga to Airport bus service

Attempting to travel between the Onehunga and the Airport by public transport is a pain due to a lack of direct connections.

The airport bus speeds past Onehunga on State Highway 20 on its way into town. Even if it did stop it would still charge passengers the full fare of $15 for going half the distance. While its possible to get off at Three Kings Plaza and bus back, at a total (un)fare of $19.20, the cheapest taxi at $25 starts looking very good.

The Auckland Regional Council/ARTA have improved services to the airport last year, increasing the frequency of the Airport bus to the CBD and through the introduction of the 380 Airporter service to Manukau. ARTA were rewarded with a 13.5% increase in patronage, demonstrating there is demand for better airport services. The Manukau service has great potential as it links up with the rail system at Papatoetoe, which together could offer a more reliable service into Auckland CBD, particularly at peak hour. Unfortunately, there has not been enough marketing and promotion of this service for it to reach its potential. An airport services page on the Maxx website would be a good start at no cost.

Flying back home on Sunday I thought I would try an experiment. How easy would be it to catch the 380 to Manukau and then get a bus to Onehunga from there? While I would normally check the Maxx website to see where the routes best interconnect, I thought it would be more interesting to take the position of a tourist new to Auckland. So I asked at the Airport helpdesk. The older woman behind the counter was very helpful, familiar with the 380 service as she sometimes used it to get to work. She suggested staying on the bus to Manukau and catching the connecting bus from there.

My flight landed at 4.30pm. The 380 arrived after 15 minutes and took roughly 10 minutes to reach Papatoetoe station and another 10 to arrive in Manukau. So far so good. There were about 7 passengers on the bus. Unfortunately being Sunday I happened to strike an hour and a half long break in the timetable for the next 348 to Onehunga, and had to wait 50 minutes for the connecting bus. At least the mall was open at the time. This is likely to be nearly the worst possible scenario as the 348 connection is more frequent at other times in the week.

While the 348 is a lovely fast bus from Onehunga into town, before this it snakes like Slytherin through Mangere and Mangere Bridge for 40 minutes. This meant I didn't reach Onehunga until 6:45pm, meaning a total of 2 hours travelling time. With a straightforward connection between the 380 and the 348 it would take an hour.

I later found out it is possible to get off at Papatoetoe and catch the 348 on St George Street - this would take approximately 15-20 minutes off the total journey time (cost $8.60). Another option, more direct, but only available during the week, is to catch the 375 from the airport and transfer to the 348 on Ascot/Kirkbride Rd.

Despite the two hour commute last Sunday, I would catch the 380 again, but would only try it during the week. Also would like to try out the 375/348 combo as this is the cheapest ($3.20) and most direct route from Onehunga to the Airport. I only wish the 375 ran more often. That said I suspect only transport geeks like myself and students will bother with having to catch more than one bus.

The reopening of the Onehunga branch line for passenger trains next year provides a great opportunity to fix the Onehunga to Airport transport hole. A connecting bus from the Onehunga train station to the Airport would be a great way to encourage more patronage on the line, as well as create demand for the eventual extension of the line to the Airport. The combination of the bus lanes to be built on the new Mangere Bridge motorway crossing and the ability of rail to sail past peak hour traffic on the Onehunga to CBD stretch, will improve the potential reliability and speed of the service. Geoff on the Better Transport forum make a similar suggestion here. That said, the following could make a Airport>Onehunga>CBD service even more viable.

• ARTA are currently planning for half hour peak services on the Onehunga line, with services each hour off peak. An airport service, if it was to be used for travel to the CBD would require half hour off peak services at the very least. While I appreciate the Britomart tunnel is a troubling bottleneck, could some other southern line services stop at Newmarket until we get a CBD rail tunnel?
  
• Move the Onehunga bus terminal closer to the new Onehunga railway station. I am told the Onehunga Business Association have previously resisted such suggestions for no other reason than they want people to walk 10 minutes past their shops. This won't happen - people travelling from the south will stay on the bus into town instead of transferring to the train. Given the recent attitutes of bus companies like Infratil, Aucklanders are plain sick of myopic business owners who demand the public transport system should be screwed up for the benefit of their private profits.
• Integrated ticketing, or at least a combined ticket for the bus/train journey into town.

I really hope ARTA consider the idea of an Airport bus service to Onehunga that linked up with the train and other buses. It strikes me as a good use of existing infrastructure while we keep the demands persistent for the CBD rail tunnel and an airport rail service.

State Highway 20: A bit sneaky

Yesterday I took the opportunity to walk along the new section of State Highway 20 before it opens for traffic next Friday.

NZTA claim to have made provision for rail in the future as part of the SH20 project. Despite looking through a number of NZTA documents over the past few months I have found very little detail on what this means, besides leaving a little extra room under the bridges.

I couldn't see where the railway line would go, so I asked one of the representatives in the public NZTA information tent. He pointed to a narrow section of grass running alongside the eastern side of the new motorway, where "light rail" for passengers could run. He confirmed this ruled out heavy rail like the rest of the Auckland network, carrying both freight and passengers.

There is only room for a single track light rail - it seems NZTA planners are oblivious to the huge amount of recent double tracking work over the rest of the Auckland rail network. A passenger service that is single tracked over 4km is going to have limited service frequency.

The guy I spoke to was a good natured sort. He even ventured to say with a smile that building SH20 on a designated rail corridor was "a bit sneaky'. You could say that.

It sounds like top dogs in NZTA and the Government decided to do the minimum they thought would be required to build their road. Unfortunately it sounds like we have lost rail options for the future already.

So while NZTA claim they have left provision for rail, "including ARTA's promosed rail link to the airport", this does seem at odds with ARTA's draft 2009 Auckland Transport Plan which includes a Southdown to Avondale link for both freight and passengers, following the proposed route of SH20 to Waterview.

Its also worth noting that Onehunga residents lost their beach in 1984 when a motorway was rammed over the waterfront, despite a Government promise to fix up their mess when they next extended the motorway. Well that is now happening, and it looks like Onehunga will be given what NZTA believes is the bare minimum to make the problem go away. The Onehunga Enhancement Society is to launch a legal challenge.

These examples ought to be a warning to the residents of Mt Roskill as NZTA start the "consultations" about the extension of SH20 to Waterview.

As I was walking back I heard another couple asking those in uniform where the railway line was going to go. Good.

I predict a double tracked rail line will be needed at some point, but because of the decisions made over SH20, its likely to become a more expensive project. I fear that Auckland's transport problems will never be solved while there remains a focus on the ultimate sovereignty of the car and short term economic cost/benefit analysis. Particularly when such decisions limit options for the future.

PS: At least they let the kids draw on the Motorway for one day (see pic above). If Auckland City Council gave out free chalk - would there be such a graffiti problem?

Auckland rail stations to prop up a debt ridden KiwiRail?

The decision the National Government to abandon the regional fuel tax, but promise to fund Auckland's rail electrification left a number of other significant transport projects unfunded. This included railway station upgrades, ferry terminals and (long fought for) integrated ticketing.

The Auckland Regional Council (ARC) based its budgets on income that was expected from the regional fuel tax, only to find the rug pulled out from under it by unilateral action from central government. Its not the ARC being irresponsible here*.

Now it appears National may have had an ulterior motive. To cover the shortfall, the ARC may be forced to cede the region's control of 41 railway stations to government owned KiwiRail, with Mike Lee calling the move a 'technical confiscation'.

If another Government was attempting to pull the same trick and the train stations happened to be privately owned National would have been crying communism and predicting the end of the capitalist world order. That said, its a pity Labour were not this hard nosed with Toll Holdings, the former owners of the railways.

I don't discount there may be strategic advantages to having KiwiRail own the stations - but the way National is going about it is very underhand, particularly as they are dealing with locally owned public assets. The ARC is likely to be the more responsible public owner at present, particularly when National is attempting to run spending cuts across the public service.

At the same time Transport Minister and former Hollow Man Steven Joyce is announcing new investment in KiwiRail as a 'stimulus package', when it is nothing of the sort. Instead Joyce is merely re announcing investments made by the previous government, and forcing KiwiRail to take on more debt as a means of gaining long overdue new locomotives. He is also cutting public transport funding to build more roads. In other words, cynical public relations spin many people would just call lies.

There may be a link between Joyce's demands to reorganise the train set in Auckland and in KiwiRail nationally. By acquiring Auckland's rail stations KiwiRail gains significant assets and land to add to its balance sheet. This would only encourage National to load yet more debt onto KiwiRail - is this the grand plan?

* One wonders Stephen Joyce, as one of the more 'cynically motivated' Nats has an ulterior motive for attempting to undermine the ARC, with the Royal Commission into Auckland Governance soon to report, and Mike Lee likely to be the main challenger to John Bank's quest to be 'Lord Mayor' of Auckland. Hmmm

Yay to the Onehunga Express

Very happy to hear today that the Onehunga Branch rail line will reopen for both passengers and frieght in 2009. Well done to the Government, Ontrack, Auckland Regional Transport Authority and the Auckland Regional Council. As I am currently living in Onehunga, I only wish it was open so I could use it to go into town on Friday!

Its happy days in Onehunga for the Campaign for Better Transport too.

This particular line represents an important part of New Zealand rail history. Auckland's first railway opened between Auckland and Onehunga in 1873, so there may be some value in promoting this fact - how about a couple of steam train trips for the tourists? New Zealand's first public railway opened in Ferrymead in 1863, but one would expect an ex-Christchurch person to point that out wouldn't they!

Ironically a friend and I were recently discussing a creative little action to encourage the powers that be to put the Onehunga line back into service. We were getting quite enthused by the idea and then we hear it is happening - oh well - its still great news!

I've been quoted in the Listener

I was quoted in last weeks edition of the Listener talking about Toll's plans to end the Overlander train service. I will post up a link to the article 'End of the Line' (by Sally Blundell) when the complete text is available online.

It was the first time I have been officially 'interviewed' by a journalist, so I admit I was a little nervous about being quoted saying something silly. On seeing the article, I am happy.

While its nice to see my name in there, I am much more chuffed to see the article raise issues I found when I researched Toll two years ago. Other mainstream media have appeared to want to believe the Government's spin that the deal with Toll will save rail in NZ, and do not seem to realise that the closure of the Northerner and the Overlander are at the very least partly attributable to agreements made over passenger rail at the time of the Toll rail deal.

Toll have a vested interest in ending the Overlander rail service

So Toll Holdings, the Australian owned rail operator, have decided to axe yet another passenger service, the Overlander between Auckland and Wellington. This follows the chop of the night service over the same route in 2004.

At the time of the axing of the Northerner in 2004 I predicted Toll would cut more passenger services.

"More cutbacks and closures are likely, as the July deal between Toll and the Government stated there would be no new scheduled passenger operations for three years. So even if another operator decided they wished to run a service cancelled by Toll, they would be unable to do so. After three years, Toll is only required to run three return passenger services on a line to maintain its monopoly."

So by ending the Overlander service now, Toll have a year to kill off the service with no threat of the service being taken up by another operator. A new operator wanting to start a new service between Auckland and Wellington will now have to start from scratch.

So while Jeanette Fitzsimons is right to call on the Government to ensure the infrastructure for such a service is not lost, she does not appear to identify the real cause - the 2004 rail deal between Toll and senior Labour ministers.

While the 2004 deal was widely touted as 'taking back the tracks' into public ownership, the deal actually put some significant restrictions on what the Government could do with its new dilapidated 'asset'. At the same time the Government 'bought the tracks' for $2* the Australian transport multinational gained a near effective monopoly on the use of the tracks until 2070. Toll also gained a seat on the board of the track operating company, and the ability to take the Government to arbitration over track access fees and track spending plans. Negotiations over track access fees for the next year have been dragging on for months, so I would not be surprised if the end of the Overlander is part of a Toll 'hardball' negotiating strategy over track access fees.

Toll asked the Government for a subsidy for the Overlander to continue. For a private business Toll are regularly demanding public subsidies - perhaps it would be simplier if the Government just nationalised the company!

Toll have shown no interest in passenger services, apart from what they call 'high value tourist operations'. In March this year Toll cut several North Island towns from the Overlander's schedule - so it could be argued that the drop in passenger numbers was not all pure 'market forces'. It is reminicient of the stupid decision of the previous owners TranzRail to build the new Christchurch passenger railway station miles from anywhere and on no bus routes - the Southerner train service between Christchurch and Dunedin did not last long. With such a mindset, there was no incentive to keep fares competitive with other forms of transport.

And of course if private ownership had not been so darned irresponsible in failing to maintain the tracks passenger rail journeys would now be a darn sight faster and more comfortable.

Update: Many of the comments on Frog's post echo the point made above - if Toll run a rubbish service, they should not be surprised when not enough people use it.

Instead of making deals with Australian mulitnationals with dodgy employment records, the Government would have been far better to nationalise the whole railways and gain a clear start to promote its social, enironmental and transport goals, without having to make concessions to profit centric private investors.

Tags: Politics, Rail, Corporates, Toll Holdings, Privatisation

* Toll ended up getting $2 for the rail network, as a government official did not have a $1 coin in his pocket.

Campaign against sale of Lyttelton Port gathers steam

The Keep Our Port Public coalition (KOPP) is holding a public meeting in Christchurch opposing the sale of Lyttelton Port Company to Hutchison, a Hong Kong based multinational corporation. The sale represents the restart of the agenda to privatise publicly owned assets, and there are good indications the sale of the port could be followed by the privatisation of the bus company and Citycare.

For some background on this issue see my earlier post here.

We already have an impressive list of speakers for the meeting, including

• Sir Kerry Burke (the current chair of Environment Canterbury but I don't think he is speaking in this capacity)
• Green MP Metiria Turei
• Maritime Union of New Zealand
• Wayne Butson, Rail and Maritime Transport Union
• Murray Horton, CAFCA

So at 7.30 pm on Monday 10 April come along to the Limes Room of the Christchurch Town Hall and stop the privatisation of our port!

An opinion piece by Murray Horton of KOPP, 'Moore's mighty sellout' was published in the Press on Friday, and Murray has already received a lot of positive feedback about the article.

Murray says the proposed port sale sets a dangerous precedent for the future of other publicly owned assets in Christchurch.
"This is the latest move by the Council ideologues who want to convert the People's Republic into Christchurch Inc. It graunches back into life a process that was stalled and discredited back in the unlamented 1990s, namely privatisation. This is the first such sale here since National forced it to sell Southpower. But this one has not been forced on it by anyone else, it is all the Council's own work. It will set off a stampede for port "restructuring and rationalisation" around the country, a process that progressed as far as corporatisation during the 1980s' Rogernomics pandemic. And it looks like there will more to come - the Council has removed both the Red Bus Company and City Care, from its list of strategic assets to be protected. It would now appear that the Mayor's policy on publicly-owned city assets is that less is definitely Moore. It sets a dangerous precedent."

A leaflet and poster advertising the meeting is currently filling up email inboxes all over the country. Once the leaflet, poster and Murray's article are available online I will post up a link. Till then I am happy to email them to interested people :)

Tags: Politics, Lyttelton, Corporates, Hutchison, Privatisation, Christchurch

At least there are plenty of ways to undermine the proposed Auckland Toll roads

Via Tumeke : The NZ Herald reports that Auckland drivers without passengers could face fast lane tolls. "Drivers may have to pay tolls to join the fast lanes on costly new Auckland motorways - or earn free use by carrying at least two passengers."

Transit New Zealand Chief executive Rick van Barneveld said "reserving fast lanes for high-occupancy vehicles or those whose drivers were willing to pay would help to limit congestion by "managing" demand for travel, a legal obligation for road-builders."

This raises some interesting possibilities. If there was no charge for cars with two passengers I wonder if we would see professional 'passengers' who would mingle at either end of the bridge or motorway, offering to be a 'passenger' for less than the cost of the toll!

Better still - people who are opposed to toll roading (like me) could become 'free' passengers to ensure the whole toll collecting shenanigans was totally uneconomic. Hehehe.

The Land Transport Management Act, passed by Labour and the Greens, allows a toll road to be built only if it has strong local support and an alternative free route is available.

While it may start out with public and private roads side by side, roading companies no doubt would want to build roads where the alternative is inconvenient or via Temuka to gain 'greater market share' (aiming for a monopoly).

There is a significant danger a two tier roading system would lead to creeping privatisation, especially if a right wing government thought it could penny pinch by not maintaining/extending public roads on the grounds there is a private alternative available - provided by roading companies that just happen to be big financial supporters of said right wing government.

Under a part privatised roading system there would be fewer public roads, and it is likely the remaining public roads would not be maintained as well as they are now.

I was in London when Ken Livingstone bought in the congestion charge - and I suspect this will become a favourite example for Treasury boffins and the usual suspects who love to privatise things. But London has had a well developed public transport system for years, so when Ken says the poor use the buses he is right, but given we lack the same infrastructure here I strongly doubt the same argument could be sustained for NZ cities.

Hail to the bus driver

Really pleased to read in the Press yesterday that Environment Canterbury and the bus companies have renegotiated bus service contracts so they can provide staff with pay rises of about $2 an hour. The deal is very welcome and makes a stark contrast with the ideologically driven deregulation of the Christchurch Transport Board in the early 1990s.

ECan is 'co-funding'” the cost of the deal with Land Transport New Zealand. In Auckland bus drivers are set to get a fair pay increase too - but they had to go on strike twice to get it.

The Christchurch deal is in response to a chronic shortage of bus drivers, currently forcing bus companies to cancel between four and forty trips per day. This demonstrates the destructive and counterproductive effects of both low wages and deregulation. Red Bus pays $13.14 to fully qualified collective agreement staff, while Leopard pays $13.13. Every few years, drivers must update their licences at their own expense (Press 16/4/05).

Red Bus driver "Lucy" says drivers have to work 70 hours a week over six days to make a decent living from driving. "We quickly become exhausted, we rarely see or have time with our families and finally have no choice but to leave the industry completely shattered," she told the Press (16/4/05). Bus companies ban their drivers from taking to the media, so even when they are welcoming the latest deal as "excellent news", they need to use fake names.

Why has there been so little attention given to the reasons why this situation came about? To my mind, the dismal pay levels of Christchurch and Auckland bus drivers is a logical consequence of a narrow minded policy of contracting out bus services to the lowest bidder.

As Amalgamated Workers' Union secretary Calvin Fisher says - the competitive tender process has backfired on the public (Press, 16/4/05). "The position is that ever since public transport has been given to regional councils, all that's happened is that (the services) are contracted out on a tender basis, and that's driven down wages," he says. In 1992, following deregulation, patronage figures sank to an all time low of 6.8 million for the year and the bus system of Christchurch was dangerously close to collapsing altogether.

Christchurch Buses - 'A Cautionary Fable'
In 1990, the citizens of the Peoples Republic of Christchurch were very happy. The Christchurch Transport Board, publicly owned by the people, had just replaced its aging fleet of buses with brand new MAN buses. The citizens cheered. But in 1991 an evil scurge of 'deregulation' came from the north, led by city councillor Pansy Wong (now a National MP) and a National Government. The bus company was expected to be privatised, and each of the routes contracted out to whoever could give the council the cheapest price. It was written that the council must be cheapskates, and consider nothing else, said the new right black magic spellbook. While the council buses remained in public ownership, the CTB was turned into a 'Council Controlled Trading Organisation' (similar to an SOE).

Following the scurge of deregulation, new bus companies came to town, in the oldest, cheapest noisiest buses they could find. Even the schoolkiddies (like me), used to riding in old buses, were appalled at the old bangers now on Christchurch streets.

One day citizens were travelling to work in a nice new comfortable MAN bus, and now they were riding in the buses Auckland had just got rid of, buses that were well over 15 years old (and to make matters worse for Cantabs they were still in Auck'’er yellow). Where have our new buses gone cried the Cantabrians? The market is at work was the reply. The citizens were not happy.