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Technology is leading the way in helping make sure the Bay of Plenty’s public transport network, run by Toi Moana, evolves to meet the region’s growing population. With more people choosing to use buses in Tauranga, Rotorua and Whakatāne, technology is helping our Baybus network lead efforts to improve services, making public transport more reliable and accessible.

Our region’s public transport system has seen significant growth in passenger numbers, with a 22.9% year-on-year increase (July 2023 – June 2024). This reflects a growing demand for buses across the rohe, with 628,577 additional journeys made by Baybus customers in the past year.

Key highlights:


  • Rotorua bus patronage saw a 10.5% increase (an additional 44,629 trips)

  • Tauranga bus patronage (including schools) saw a 25.2% increase (an additional 553,370 trips)

  • Whakatāne bus patronage saw a 16.9% increase (an additional 5,922 trips)


Toi Moana Councillor, and Chair of our Public Transport Committee, Andrew von Dadelszen, says there are many factors behind the surge in patronage.

“Growth in the region, higher fuel prices, and a shift towards sustainable lower-carbon travel are all leading more people to choose buses. We’re confident that the technology we’ve introduced to support these changes have also made public transport the smarter option for our community.”

Oliver Haycock, Bay of Plenty Regional Council’s Public Transport Director says smart technology is driving improvements to our service and enhancing the overall customer experience. This includes a soon-to-launch, user-friendly website with real-time bus tracking, our innovative Baybus OnDemand service in Tauranga South, which features app-based dynamic routing, and the upcoming National Ticketing System, introducing a standardised payment system across all public transport services in New Zealand.

I am copying this Kiwiblog post of September 10, 2024 by David Farrar


It is unbelievable that the National Coalition Government is still allowing this atrocious behavior by government bureaucrats.

Kiwiblog posted:

I wish this was made up, but it isn’t.

Jerry Coyne writes:

The government of New Zealand continues to throw away money by funding ludicrous projects involved indigenous “ways of knowing” (in this case Mātauranga Māori, or “MM”). … One of the projects involves trying to stem the death of kauri trees (Agathis australis), the iconic tree of New Zealand.  Kauri deforestation, due to logging by Europeans and also burning buy Māori, is now exacerbated by “Kauri dieback,” the death of trees after infection by a funguslike organism. This has resulted in the closure of forests (the infection may be spread by humans carrying soil on their feet), but so far nothing has really been effective in curing the disease or stopping its spread. But a new government-funded project based on Māori traditions involves trying to stop the disease by, yes, playing whale songs to the trees and dousing them with whale oil.  

The taxpayer funded project explains:

Māori whakapapa describes how the kauri and tohorā (sperm whale) are brothers, but they were separated when the tohorā chose the ocean over the forest. In this research area we looked at how this connection could possibly help save the kauri from kauri dieback disease.

They’re not fucking brothers. One is a tree. The other is a whale.

They are not the same species, the same genus, the same family, the same order, the same class, the same phylum or even the same kingdom!

Coyne points out:

Note that the video begins with the statement that there are “forms of knowledge” other than science, and that indigenous knowledge gets no respect because the “colonization process” has “tried to remove our knowledge” and outlawed it.  In my view, this is pure, ludicrous science-dissing. The whale nonsense begins at about 2:50 with the claim that “the whale once traversed the face of the earth” (yes, on land, too!) and that there is a “sibling relationship” between whales and kauri trees. This is what happens when “traditional wisdom” is used instead of modern science (which, by the way, discovered the organism causing the tree infection). Well, who knows—the tattooed Måori man might be right: whale oil and whale bone might cure the trees, as he claimed it has. But I’m not betting on it.  How about a double-blind control test rather than legends and anecdotes?

Any entity that funds anti-science instead of science should lose all government funding in my view.


This is a really poignant blog by Eric Crampton. I totally agree that (especially) storm effect is a huge issue for our Regional Council and we need to concentrate on flood and storm adaption mechanisms and let Central Government look to any mitigation methodologies for climate change.

Source: Kiwiblog, July 24, 2024

Eric Crampton writes:

Policy problems should be dealt with by the level and part of government best placed to deal with them. Good public policy should recognise subsidiarity. Local problems should be dealt with locally. But not all problems are local. A council issuing its own currency to address perceived failures in national-level monetary policy would not be a great idea. Council-level policies aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions are about as sensible as councils trying to take on monetary policy or building up their own armed forces. It isn’t that monetary policy and national defence aren’t critically important. It’s rather that those concerns are best handled by central government.

Yes importance doesn’t mean it is appropriate for local government.

Last week, Act Party MP Mark Cameron lodged a member’s bill prohibiting regional councils from considering greenhouse gas emissions from consented activities when deciding on resource consents. Unfortunately, and hopefully unintentionally, Act’s press release claimed the Bill would “prohibit regional councils from considering climate change as a factor in their plans”. Blocking councils from planning for increased flooding and for rising sea levels would be pretty stupid. That kind of land use planning is core council business.

Climate change adaptation is very much a role for local government.

Different parts of the country have very different opportunities for mitigating emissions and for sequestering carbon. When New Zealand reaches net zero, parts of the country will remain net emitters and other parts of the country will have net removals. It is impossible to tell, in 2024, which greenhouse gas emissions in 2060 will remain difficult to reduce. It is also impossible to tell which path technology may take for removing emissions from the atmosphere: trees may be surpassed by other options. Hitting the net zero target at a national level will be hard enough to do cost-effectively. Trying to do it within each region misses out on opportunities where abatement is cheaper in some places than in others. The only sensible way of bridging those differences would be allowing emissions trading between regions – and that’s what the existing Emissions Trading Scheme already does.

Yep use the ETS to reduce emissions nationally.

All comments regarding Local Government are my personal views, and do not purport to represent the views of our Regional Council – of which I am an elected representative.

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