Bay of Plenty Regional Council Director of Public Transport Oliver Haycock. Photo: Libby Kirkby-McLeod/RNZ
Tauranga is the latest New Zealand city to trial on-demand public transport, using electric vans in place of large diesel buses.
There is no pre-timetabled route or set stops, instead people order up their public transport through an app.
Bay of Plenty director of public transport Oliver Haycock said it's not a door-to-door service, more corner-to-corner, aiming to get passengers to the closest corner to where they need to go.
RNZ hopped in the rideshare service for an hour with driver Pauline McBride as she picked up her latest morning passenger.
Once on board, the passenger explained why she used the service.
"Today is shopping, on other days I'm going to English class," she said.
She catches the service so often she joked she could be considered part of the bus furniture.
McBride described how the van's software directs the rideshare so that the pick-ups and drop-offs happen in the most efficient way.
"You get a list of jobs; the blue is the pick-ups, the red is the drop-off."
Passengers were then taken by the most efficient route, considering the needs of all passengers onboard at the time.
Bay of Plenty Regional Council director of public transport Oliver Haycock said Tauranga South, where the on-demand bus operates, had historically been hard to service with public transport.
McBride said the on-demand vans go deep into the suburbs and connect passengers with the wider public transport network in the city.
Pauline McBride, one of the Baybus OnDemand drivers. Photo: Libby Kirkby-McLeod/RNZ
"We take people from out here and drop them at Seventeenth Ave and they catch the bus into town, or sometimes they will go to The Crossing and catch the express bus into town," she said.
But it was also handy for getting around the general Tauranga South area.
McBride said one passenger told her that if it wasn't for the on-demand service they would never leave their house.
With the on-demand service there's no running behind a bus if you are late to the stop.
If passengers aren't at the meeting place, the service will wait for two minutes and then move on - which happened at first with Evelyn and her friends.
"On the app it said there was six minutes left so I'm doing some last-minute jobs before we leave the house and came back and it seemed like one minute after I put my phone down it was here," she said.
She was able to rebook immediately and the van, which was only a street way, was able to turn back.
It's a symbol of how the service overall feels very friendly.
"It's a lot of regulars on here, and we catch it very very often, so we know pretty much everyone who drives," Evelyn said.
"We are kind of like friends with all the on-demand drivers," her friend adds.
The vans are all electric and have a dedicated charging space at The Crossing in south Tauranga. Photo: Libby Kirkby-McLeod/RNZ
Down south, Timaru has been running the MyWay by Metro on-demand public transport service since 2021 following a successful trial in 2020.
Environment Canterbury public transport general manager Stewart Gibbon said close to 270,000 passenger trips were taken on the service in the last financial year (2023-24), the highest public transport usage in Timaru for the past 24 years.
"We're proud of how the community has embraced this new system, and the rise of patronage we've seen since it started."
Oliver Haycock from the Bay of Plenty Regional Council said passenger satisfaction, efficiency, number of passengers, and cost will all be assessed at the end of the eighteen-month trial, to decide whether ordering up a public rideshare stays as part of Tauranga's future.
However, so far, he said 92 percent of over 8000 passengers who have used the service between April and August have given the service a five star rating.
