Proposal To Increase Marlborough Bus Fares By 20%

Wednesday, 12 March 2025, 7:20 am
Article: Maia Hart - Local Democracy Reporter

Marlborough’s bus fares are likely to increase for the first time since the inception of the Blenheim service 20 years ago.

The council’s assets and services committee approved the draft proposal at a meeting on Tuesday, and heard that the fares needed to be increased due to a requirement from the Government.

A 20% increase would lift the two Blenheim bus routes from $2 to $2.40 for adults and $1 to $1.20 for children. The Picton bus route would increase from $4 to $4.80 for adults and $2 to $2.40 for children, each way.

Multi-model adviser Charlotte Campbell-Lamerton told the committee the Government’s National Policy Statement for Land Transport 2024-34 said road controlling authorities needed to address the escalating maintenance costs across the sector.

“That includes public transport,” she said.

A report prepared by Campbell Lamerton for the meeting said the proposed fares had been calculated so they fell in line with a directive from the New Zealand Transport Agency Waka Kotahi (NZTA).

Her report said the public transport system in Marlborough had experienced an increase in operational costs due to factors such as inflation, labour wage increases, fuel price fluctuation and maintenance expenses.

To date, those costs had been absorbed by NZTA and the council.

The report said revenue from ticket sales and advertising such as spaces on the back of buses covered 4.8% of the total cost of operating the service in the past financial year. However, an increase in people using the Picton service, which was first introduced as a trial in 2019, had brought this up to 5% in the current financial year.

“The objective is to steadily increase this to 6.5% in the financial year ending 2027,” the report said.

The council wanted to achieve this through the initial increase of 20%, before they did another review of usage in 2026-27 as well as considering any inflation.

A new national ticketing solution, which would provide a range of easy-to-use payment methods for all public transport across the country as well as network review in Blenheim, could get more people using the bus.

The council was expecting the number of Gold Card users to increase, which would decrease the amount of revenue from fares as they were allowed to travel for free between 9am and 3pm. At the moment, they made up 70% of all bus users.

Deputy mayor David Croad thought the “key” was that this was the first increase since 2005.

“You could call it a percent a year,” he said.

The new charges would start on July 1 subject to full council signoff on April 3.

LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air.

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