Nelson’s Late Late Bus is slashing services, but remaining trips will see fares halve. 

Route 8, otherwise known as the Late Late Bus, is a weekend-only Richmond to Nelson service on Friday and Saturday nights and in the early hours of the next mornings. 

But on Wednesday, the region’s joint transport committee agreed to end the 2:30 and 3:15am trips because they were deemed to be uneconomic. 

Nelson Mayor Nick Smith said that the revelation that service was subsidised by around $50 per passenger made him “weep”. 

“I just cannot look the ratepayer and the taxpayer in the eye,” he said. 

The Late Late Bus’s Richmond to Nelson trip at 2:30am carried an average of fewer than one passengers per trip on Saturdays, while Sundays were around six. 

The service’s 3:45am had already been pulled to due to poor patronage. 

All the committee members supported scrapping the trips, but Tasman councillor Jo Ellis had wondered if it was a “safer option” for some in the community. 

Nelson’s deputy mayor Rohan O’Neill-Stevens echoed similar thoughts. 

“We risk throwing away a service that… has a core social benefit in terms of making sure that young people have safe way home.” 

The Late Late Bus also had a security contractor on board for the safety of the driver and passengers.

Cheaper fare trial From November, the committee also agreed, on a six-month trial basis, to reduce the cost of the Late Late Bus by more than half to standardise the fares across the different eBus routes, and to promote the service more widely to encourage use. 

Route 1 – Richmond to Nelson via Waimea Road – will also gain an additional service that will begin at 6:22am. 

Currently, the empty bus drives from Richmond to Nelson first thing in the morning to begin its route from Nelson, soon after 7am, which heads back to Richmond. 

Now the bus will become available to take fares as it leaves Richmond. 

Route 4 – the Brook to Airport route – will also have its frequency reduced from half-hourly to every 35 minutes to better reflect the actual time the route takes to complete. 

The changes come off the back of other tweaks agreed to last month: timetable tweaks to Route 3 (Atawhai to Hospital), an additional stop outside the Richmond Aquatic Centre and Nelson College for Girls on the two express routes to Motueka and Wakefield, shifting a Nayland Road bus stop closer to Quarantine Road to enable quicker passenger access to the Nelson Junction shopping centre, and permanently allowing dogs on the bus. 

Other much-wanted changes, including earlier buses for workers on weekdays, a bus stop in the Junction carpark, increased bus frequency, and addressing the gap in services between 8 and 10pm will be considered as part of the next review of the overall public transport network. 

The next review will shape the region’s public transport for the 2027-2037 period. 

Nelson City Council’s group manager infrastructure, Alec Louverdis, has repeatedly advised the councils to be measured with their changes to the eBus service. 

“There’s a good case to be made to slow this down, to consider it in its entirety rather than just trying to do these things piecemeal; because, as I’ve said before, doing things piecemeal with public transport catches us out.” 

-Local Democracy Reporting is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air

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