Weekends, websites and Wakefield. One week of eBus data

Build it and they will come, or as Tasman Mayor Tim King said during his speech on launch day, "the success of the new eBus service will come down to people’s willingness to change the way they choose to transport themselves around the region".

Data for the first week of eBus suggests people are willing to make those changes, with 15,500 journeys taken across Nelson Tasman, an increase of 44% from the previous week under the old NBus service.

Deputy CE/Group Manager Infrastructure Alec Louverdis says the data has shown increased patronage across the entire week.

"We anticipated an uptick in journeys on the first couple of days as people showed their interest in the new routes and their keenness to experience the new buses. But early data shows a daily average of 2,600 eBus journeys compared to an average of 1,800 journeys a day on NBus. The biggest increase came on the weekend.

"The eBuses have made a great start in their first week," says Nelson Mayor Nick Smith. "I’m particularly rapt by the 195% increase in weekend journeys, enabled by the more frequent services. I’m also encouraged by the 2600 additional people who have got themselves a Bee Card this week."

On the old NBus schedule, the bus would only run six times on Saturday. The eBus schedule sees 25 Saturday trips on Route 1 alone. As a result, journeys on the eBus across the weekend have increased from 916 to 2709.

The two routes extending into Motueka and Wakefield also had a successful start.

"It’s great to see 1,200 journeys on the Wakefield and Motueka routes," says Mayor King.

"It is a service that both communities have been asking for and the numbers are a great start to this service becoming a genuine option for residents in these townships".

The new eBus website has also proven popular with 40,600 page views in the first week, with the routes and timetables pages being the most viewed.

The website has been optimised for mobile use so passengers can either use interactive timetables to see every time the bus stops at their chosen bus stop or track their nearest bus live.

Nelson City and Tasman District Councils have already received a lot of feedback on routes and timetables.

"We are paying close attention to that feedback", says Louverdis. "With any change of service like this we accept there might be some teething issues. Public consultation and data led to the decisions we made when implementing the new service, but once the new service has been live for two weeks we will look at where we may need to make adjustments."

Feedback can be submitted through shape.nelson/ebus or ebus@ncc.govt.nz.