OPINION: Caught a bus lately? I highly recommend it, which may come as a surprise to readers who remember my ravings about buses during the Bustastrophe. As much as I like to walk or cycle in good weather, our pluvial summer has meant that I’ve found myself needing to get in and out of town when it’s raining heavily.
There was a time in Wellington when buses were way slower than cars, unreliable and often so crowded that you couldn’t even get on a bus in the unlikely event that it turned up on time. That appears to have changed.
It might be because the Greater Wellington Regional Council (GWRC) and the private bus companies have got their act together. It might be because the hiring of bus drivers from overseas has eased the chronic driver shortage. It might be because the extended holiday that many Wellingtonians take means that there’s less demand and less car traffic in January. It might be that many of us are now working from home. It might be due to Nicola Willis’ public service cuts – fewer passengers mean fewer crowded buses and fewer drivers short. It could be because of all the above – an imperfect storm.
Yet the truth is, for this infrequent bus traveller, that catching a bus in Wellington seems a lot easier and hassle-free than a few years ago. I was recently in Newtown and needed to get into the CBD quickly. My bus stop was not only at the confluence of many suburban routes, but had a board showing when the buses were coming and where they were going. The bus that the board told me would be there in one minute arrived in exactly one minute! For those of us who suffered through the Bustastrophe, this is an amazing occurrence.
Being 10 minutes away from my meeting, and in a bus, I prepared to send an apologetic text saying that I would be a few minutes late. Bloody buses. Then a strange thing happened. While cars and even a few bikes, banked up at various traffic lights, the bus whizzed through the bus lane. Yes, we had to stop to pick up passengers, but it was still faster than travelling by car. There were no parking hassles when I skipped off the bus and arrived at my meeting on time. It took nine minutes to get into town for a journey that routinely takes 20 minutes in the car.
Yes, my journey occurred in mid-January, and it wasn’t an exceptionally busy day, and I used the bus at an off-peak time. But I was impressed. There is absolutely no doubt that one of the biggest improvements to bus travel in Wellington is the appearance of bus lanes. And we need more of them.
Aucklanders, who are some of the most public-transport-averse commuters in the country, swear by the bus lanes that make travel in from the North Shore so much quicker, cheaper and more convenient. Bus users don’t suffer the same opprobrium that cyclists seem to attract. Perhaps that’s because people realise that the more people you have on a bus, the fewer cars you have on the roads.
For every 10 people I hear complain about cycle lanes only one complains about bus lanes. Which is interesting given that in one of the most complained-about streets in Wellington – Kent and Cambridge Terraces – it’s actually the bus lanes that take up most of the space, not the cycle lane.
While many people can’t ride bikes for various practical reasons, buses are way more (though not completely) accessible. Yet some people lost their trust in the bus system during the Bustastrophe and haven’t gone back. My advice would be to give buses a go again – you might be as impressed as I recently was.
Wellingtonians will have some very serious discussions about motorways, second tunnels and light rail over the next few decades. In the meantime, can I suggest that the powers-that-be make expanding the scale of our bus network and the rolling-out of more bus lanes top priority.
We continually argue about transport to the airport, but don’t yet have bus lanes all the way to it from the CBD. Thanks to the GWRC, we now have a reasonably good bus service to the airport, but don’t have ordinary buses going there.
When bus services into Wellington from the Hutt were threatened, transport minister Chris Bishop acted with others in a bi-partisan manner to lobby for better bus solutions. What a great day it would be if he could order the airport to become a public transport hub for the eastern suburbs with frequent and cheap buses coming and going there from all parts of the city.
It might make him about as popular with the National Party leadership hanging out at the Koru Club as his Auckland housing intensification plans have made him, yet it would be a fantastic step forward for the capital. Two bus lanes to the planes!
An opinion by Dave Armstrong a playwright and satirist based in Wellington.
Published in The Post on 27 January 2026
For further reading concerning the points raised in this opinion -
