The boss of Auckland Transport has announced 150 jobs will be cut as he promises to get chaotic ferry, bus and train travel in the supercity back to pre-Covid-19 levels in just eight months.
New Auckland Transport (AT) chief executive Dean Kimpton said that with extra government funding the organisation was negotiating for, they could revive the region's public transport services by the end of the year.
In a statement, he said about 150 roles would be cut. It follows Auckland Council's Letter of Expectation and its annual budget for 2023/2024, which had made it clear the organisation should plan to receive less funding from the council.
Auckland buses. Photo: Supplied/ Auckland Transport
"To meet these obligations for the new financial year, we need to make changes before July 1," Kimpton said.
"These changes include embedding significant operational efficiencies and sub leasing property. It also means a reduction of roles and changes within some divisions. We anticipate a reduction of approximately 150 roles."
Kimpton has hopped on board the organisation at a time when more than a thousand bus trips a day have been cancelled or suspended, with some services so over-crowded they simply do not stop for those waiting.
The problems are mainly due to an acute driver shortage.
It is the same story for Auckland's commuter ferries, with operator Fuller360 saying it has been cancelling up to 30 percent of weekly services because there are not enough skippers or crew hands.
Kimpton told Checkpoint they were in discussion with both Auckland Council and the government toward lifting bus drivers' pay and adding more drivers.
"To do that, though, we need additional funding ... in the order of $25 million," Kimpton said.
He said there had been good discussions with government on the extra funding needed.
Last year Transport Minister Michael Wood announced $61m for increasing driver wages and improving working conditions across the country.
New Auckland Transport boss Dean Kimpton Photo: Supplied / Mark Tantrum
Kimpton said the current level of services was "deeply challenged", which was a problem created both by conditions arising from pandemic and by the driver shortages.
Without the extra $25m in funding, as well as cutting existing costs within AT, they would not be able to lift services back to where Aucklanders expect them.
"We are currently funded to deliver 80 percent of pre-Covid services, so everything we're looking to do is to lift from that, and that's the opening conversation.
"We know this is a critical issue for Aucklanders, that is the discussion we're having, it's about drivers it's about training them and it's about getting the funding for them.
"The good news is that we're really clear on what we need to do to address that gap, and I'm grateful to both Auckland Council, but to the government for addressing immigration constraints, so we can now bring the drivers and their families in, and recently you'll recall the same message around ferries.
"So between that, the training of them and the funding - which we're finalising, I expect that we'll achieve our target of 20 to 25 percent increase by the end of this year or early next year."
Kimpton said he understood Aucklanders' loss of confidence in Auckland Transport.
"I really get it, because when you've got maybe 1000 trips a week cancelled, you've got buses turning up, not turning up, and maybe they're late, maybe they're not, you lose confidence."
Kimpton said it was "a difficult and challenging time" for AT staff, and the organisation would not go into detail about the changes being made to cut costs until after consultation and the final decision-making.
He told Checkpoint they were planning to start about another 360 bus drivers in the next three months, and to have that number fully trained by the end of the following three months. In the three months following that, they would "ramp up that level of services and frequency and the patronage" back to the pre-Covid levels.
He warned it would take longer to get staffing on ferries back up to speed, as training for them took longer and and the immigration rules for them had been relaxed more recently.
"That'll take at least 12 to 18 months, so you won't see much change there until the middle of next year."
Fullers needed about 35 more skippers and deck hands. There had been "an exodus" of skippers and deck hands from New Zealand after the borders were reopened, Kimpton said.
About 80 percent of the bus drivers were expected to come from overseas, because New Zealanders did not want those jobs, he said.
Challenged about whether that was because the pay and conditions were not good enough he said AT was working on that.
"We're having a good close look at the conditions, and there's conditions we need to consider and part of that is pay."
If the organisation was successful in getting extra funding from the government it would be used to funding more drivers and to increase pay rates.
Kimpton said the overarching objective was to increase the number of people using public transport. That would mean both getting more people on the services still running, as well as bringing back some of those services that had been canned because of the shortage of drivers.
"That'll mean we bring back some of the scheduled services or increase the frequency on existing services, but it might mean that we also bring new services on board as well where the demands sit."
One problem was last minute cancellations of services that were expected but then suddenly disappear off the schedule as people wait for them to arrive.
"This is why we're so focused on bringing back the capacity, so that when we have a scheduled bus it turns up as planned, so people can rely on it."
Kimpton said in some case companies failing to provide contracted public transport services were being penalised under their agreements with Auckland Transport, but said he would not provide details as it was commercially sensitive.
Aucklanders could also expect more cycleways would be built.
"We've committed publicly to the Point Chevalier cycleway ... we've committed publicly to Glen Innes to Tāmaki, and we're reviewing Great North Road."
However, AT would be looking at a "simplified" cheaper version of cycleways, particularly when it came to complex town centres: "Not everything has to go through a town centre".
