For me personally, a return to full price adult fares is a deal breaker and will likely result in a substantial drop in my utilization of Auckland Public Transport. Half price fares did compel me to at least try out public transport to get around Auckland predominantly during the weekends (including picking up groceries at Pak n’ Save Glen Innes).

That said, it was a shit show of cancelled services, missed connections, helping out fellow public transport users who were lost, avoiding the derranged, taking two hours to get to your destintation when a car could do it in a third or even a quarter of the time. Frankly, I felt like a second class citizen and that the powers to be really couldn’t give a toss about Public Transport users.

My place of employment (East Tamaki) is poorly served by public transit so I don’t have the opportunity to use public transport regularly (even though I have longed for decades for being able to do so) and subsequently it doesn’t make sense for me to buy a monthly pass. I have to join the throngs of other single occupant cars to make the 16 km journey (32 km return) to and from work as the only pragmatic balance between cost, personal safety, and time.

Will be going back to using my car more in the weekend, even accounting for the 30c tax and excise being added back on. A bus fare of $2.37 for one way one zone travel just isn’t compelling for me in many situations. More so for short journeys that cross a zone boundary. That said exceptions where Public transport could still work for me…

• $4.20 to get into the CBD, with a $8.40 round trip, Cheaper than driving (single occupant) and paying for parking. That said, I don’t find myself needing to go into the CBD very often at all.
• Travel from the end of one zone to the other end (e.g Eastern Suburbs to New Lynn), typically using Bus 75 and hopping on the Western Line trains at Newmarket. The Same journey in an ICE car would probably be $6-8 one way  inclusive of wear and tear