Tauranga bus services

Photo: Bay of Plenty Regional Council

Organisations including the Bay of Plenty Regional Council, schools, Ministry of Education and the Transport Agency have teamed up with support from Tauranga and Western Bay of Plenty councils to extend the public transport network in Tauranga and transition urban school bus services into an integrated network over the next three years. This is being done as a result of the long-signalled stopping of Tauranga urban school bus services from the end of 2014 by the Ministry of Education.

With the potential for 5,200 students a day on school buses, without a managed transition for these students there could be increased road congestion and overloading of existing services on Tauranga’s transport network.

The aim is to reduce congestion and maintain journey time reliability particularly within Tauranga’s central urban area. It is also to improve the effectiveness of the public transport investment in Tauranga through integrating school and urban bus networks into the city’s transport system. To achieve this, an additional $22m is planned to be invested over the next 10 years with $8m in the 2015-18 NLTP period.

Benefits are expected for all road users, not just those using buses. By better managing morning congestion on key parts of the road network it is expected that up to 5 minutes travel time may be saved on highways and more than 3 minutes across the wider road network.

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