By Dan Moskovitz (He/Him)
While Metlink reports an overall 79% satisfaction with its public transport service, public transport advocacy group Better Buses Ōwhiro Bay (BBŌW) argues their suburb is being left behind.
Mimicking the questions Metlink uses during its satisfaction survey, BBŌW’s own survey found 84% of Ōwhiro Bay residents were dissatisfied with the coverage the suburb receives. Comparatively, only 10% of Metlink’s region-wide survey recipients expressed dissatisfaction.
The BBŌW survey, part of a larger report on Ōwhiro Bay’s bus services, recorded 207 responses from residents in a suburb with a population of just under 2,000. By contrast, Metlink’s Wellington-wide survey had 2,830 respondents.
Ōwhiro Bay is serviced by the 29 and 39 buses. The 39 route suffers disproportionate bus cancellations, and there aren’t enough 29 buses, with several terminating before Ōwhiro Bay.
Despite a recent meeting with Metlink, BBŌW co-founders Arunan Noble and Jack Graham don’t expect any changes soon.
“Metlink didn’t take on what we were saying,” said Noble. “They acknowledged their operational problems but didn't acknowledge the institutional problems in the network, which is the main focus of our report.
“Unfortunately, Metlink doesn't seem to want to change.”
BBŌW has since launched a petition calling for improved services to their suburb.
To add insult to injury, Metlink won’t even spell Ōwhiro Bay correctly. Ōwhiro is spelt with a tohutō/macron, but on Metlink’s webpages for the 29 and 39 routes, you’ll see the “word” “Owhiro” used. According to Te Aka, the online Māori dictionary, “Owhiro” is not a word in Te Reo Māori.
Internal Metlink email correspondence, obtained under the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act (LGOIMA), shows it wasn’t until BBŌW reached out to Metlink they began using “Ōwhiro” with the tohutō in their internal communications.
In their LGOIMA response, Metlink assured Salient, saying, “We acknowledge the official name is Ōwhiro Bay and we will ensure the use of the macron in Ōwhiro Bay will be applied consistently going forward.”
Salient received Metlink’s LGOIMA response on 15 May. Three months later, and while Metlink’s map is now using a tohutō, the “word” “Owhiro” is still used on Metlink’s website.
“With the kind of progress we're seeing around te reo in wider culture you would hope place names would be treated with a bit more respect. The fact that we're not seeing that from Metlink is quite disappointing,” said Noble.
According to Metlink group manager Samantha Gain, the reason is that Metlink’s Real-Time Information System (RTI) can’t handle macrons or special characters of any kind.
“Work is currently underway on the Metlink website and app to add the correct macronised spelling of place names to data not used by our RTI system,” she said in a statement.
According to Gain, the use of special characters would risk corrupting RTI data. However, Metlink is currently working on a new RTI system that will handle special characters such as the tohutō.
Metlink expects it to be operational by 2026.