Record passenger numbers take the buses

For immediate release: 15 July 2011

The Regional Council's Tauranga Bayhopper buses carried more than 1.6 million passengers during the past year, beating last year's previous record by almost 250,000 passengers.

Regional Council Public Transport Sub-Committee Chairman Douglas Owens said that the high patronage growth demonstrated the quality of the service on offer.

"Clearly more people are travelling on more buses, more often. It's great to see. The next step is determining how we meet this high demand, particularly at peak times."

Regional Council Acting Transport Policy Manager Emlyn Hatch said the growth was remarkable for a bus service established just 10 years ago. In that decade numbers had more than quadrupled.

"Every 100 days we carry over 450,000 passengers, and that's more people than we did in the whole of 2002. The figures are a terrific result."

Mr Hatch said the continued increase in passenger numbers on Tauranga's buses was due to the reliability and convenience of the service. Rotorua's buses have also shown an increase in patronage. Usage is up 10 percent on last year's passenger numbers, and an extra 74,000 passengers were carried in the past year.

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