Wellington City bus review

In February and March last year many of you gave feedback on our proposed network for Wellington City bus services.

Throughout 2012 we worked closely with resident and community groups to design a network which matched the needs of our communities and the aims of the review.  This work culminated in November when Regional Councillors and Officers presented a new network design to local resident and community groups.

Compared to what was proposed initially, the revised network design:

• reduces the need for people to connect at suburban hubs to access Wellington’s CBD
• does not include a core route along The Terrace
• includes a high frequency bus service between Victoria University (Kelburn Campus) and Wellington Railway Station
• features dedicated direct routes from Wellington CBD to both Johnsonville and Newlands
• includes direct routes to Kilbirnie from the Miramar Peninsula

There will be additional weekend and evening services in areas that currently have none. To enable this, some poorly patronised services will be reduced.

The revised network has evolved from feedback you gave us on the proposed network design in February and March 2012.

There’s still some further fine tuning to complete on the network but we can now move to the next phase of the review process.

We’re working on draft timetables based on the network design below.  In mid 2013 we should have timetables available for you to look at and we hope to begin putting the changes in place progressively in 2014.

Wellington City Bus Review network design

It’s really important to note that this is our view at this moment in time and just as the current network design changes so may this one.  This is the network we have chosen to begin our timetable formulation from.

When	Action
December 2012 - April 2013	Formulate detailed timetables based on the revised network design and bus capacity analysis
March - May 2013	Timetable reviews / community meetings
Mid 2013 - late 2013	Negotiate changes with operators
2014 onwards	Community meetings prior to operational implementation
2014 onwards	Phased operational implementation

 

Next steps

It's unlikely you'll notice any changes until 2014 onwards and even then implementation will be phased in - it won't happen all at once.

As you can see from the timeline, we are committed to ongoing communication with our communities.