MyWay's potential impact concerns NZ Taxi Federation

The New Zealand Taxi Federation is watching for any impact MyWay buses may have on its Timaru members but operator ECan says the services are different.

MyWay is New Zealand's first on demand public transport service in which passengers can order via an app , or phone a call centre to arrange to be picked up. The 12-month trial was launched in June and its seven vehicles have the capacity for between 11 and 13 passengers each.

Federation executive director John Hart claimed MyWay was heavily subsidised and consequently priced so cheaply it meant it was bound to have an effect on taxi drivers.

“It’s hard for those not subsidised to compete with it,” Hart said.

From June to November 42,928 trips have been booked for MyWay in Timaru. Fares increased from $2 per adult to $2.50, and from $1.30 to $1.50 for children, on November 23.

It replaces some of Timaru’s traditional bus routes, as ECan struggles with ways to address declining public transport passenger numbers.

Hart said changes to suburban transport was occurring all over the world, and he accepted it was not cost effective to run a 50-seater bus with few passengers.

“We have to look at other ways of doing it.”

Hart said MyWay could have worked with the taxi company and shared its call centre.

However, ECan’s MyWay Metro public transport business services manager Jeremy Dickson said the federation had not engaged with ECan over the MyWay trial.

“We ran an open competitive tender process to select the provider and when we did that we notified multiple parties including the taxi federation, but they did not respond to us nor the tender,” Dickson said.

MyWay is using the Ritchies call centre for the trial, he said.

“The purpose of the Timaru trial has been to test a service that supports the needs of Timaru community members to travel across the city.

“As part of this trial we required larger vehicles to enable the ability to efficiently transport larger numbers of passengers at any one time and also to meet accessibility requirements for customers,” Dickson said.

He said comparing the MyWay service with taxis did not work as MyWay transported multiple people from corner to corner whereas taxis went door to door, he said.

“Passengers expect and receive longer, non-direct journeys as part of this service in contrast to a taxi service which is a door to door, direct to destination, private service. This is a completely different user scenario.”

Dickson said public transport was always subsidised.

“One of the reasons public transport exists is to ensure accessibility for all people at affordable rates.

“MyWay is proving particularly successful in this; opening up travel around and across Timaru for people who didn’t previously engage with public transport,” he said.

Timaru Taxis did not want to comment on the MyWay service at this stage.