Source: Radio New Zealand
Christchurch buses carried 120,000 more passengers in April, compared to the year before. Supplied / Environment Canterbury
Canterbury is asking the government for $5 million to improve public transport.
Metro Christchurch saw a 10 percent increase in people using public transport in April, compared to the same month last year, with 120,000 more passengers.
Environment Canterbury public transport general manager Stuart Gibbon told Checkpoint that some people had to miss out as a result.
“We’re able to cope with it, mostly, at the moment, but what we do see is some people being left behind at particular stops on particular routes,” he said.
While Gibbon said people had been accommodating – and understood that there was a lot of pressure on public transport with increased demand – he wanted those who funded the service to hear that Metro was struggling to meet it.
He added that Metro was funded through users who paid fares, targeted rates, and from the government through the National Land Transport Fund.
Gibbon wanted the government to stump up more, in order to add more buses to the network.
“Well for this current funding period, for the three years through to the end of next year, we were seeking around about 10 million dollars to improve our network. Half of that of course would come from us and half from government. We’ve got our share so ideally it doesn’t sound like a lot of money does it?”
Gibbon said there were not a lot of buses that were suitable for public transport.
“We’re in a bit of a bind at the moment because our current ticketing environment is way past its use by date.
“We’re the first region to be implementing the National Ticketing Service, so we’re pretty excited about that project, but it’s not quite fully implemented yet, so our ability to add more fleet and collect fares at the same time is challenging.”
Gibbon said Environment Canterbury would bid for the next National Land Transport Fund, which would be from 2027 through to 2030.
But it would not find out about that until September 2027, “which is possibly a little bit late for the issues we’re facing right now”.
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
Original source: https://nz.mil-osi.com/2026/05/20/some-people-being-left-behind-demand-for-bus-travel-on-the-rise-in-canterbury/