Parents struggle to top up kids' bus cards, call free transport for all students

An advocacy group Parents for Climate Aotearoa has launched an open letter, calling on the Government to make public transport free for all students under the age of 25.

Executive director and founder of the organisation, Alicia Hall, says she drafted the letter after hearing from parents about their financial struggles amid the fuel crisis.

“It's just come to a point where with rising rent, rising food costs, rising fuel costs, they were finding it harder and harder to top up their high schoolers' bus cards.”

Hall says that the fuel crisis exacerbates the issue and many parents are “needing to make awful choices of: do we put food on the table, or do we get the kids to school?”

“Children and young people, they're our future doctors, nurses, lawyers, teachers. Being able to have them access school, no matter where they live, is really, really important,” she says.

Hall says that the fuel crisis is going to keep affecting students and parents so “it just makes sense to put in place these low-cost solutions.”

While director and spokesperson for an advocacy organisation Greater Auckland, Patrick Reynolds, supports the idea, he says there are limitations to it.

With fuel costs rising and financial pressures increasing, Reynolds says it would make sense to reduce public transport costs for those who need it.

"They really can't afford it more [than others] ... It shouldn't be a Hunger Games.”

Reynolds says that for a large chunk of the population, the barrier to public transport is effectiveness, not the cost, and this is where it can become a difficult problem to solve.

“I think there's a lot of reasons why you don't want totally free blanket public transport,” he says.

“Public transport is expensive to operate and even more expensive to improve... if you take away that one funding source for public transport it is unlikely to improve.”

Reynolds says that the “employed middle adult group” are the ideal demographic to pay and help with maintenance costs.

“I should pay. And it's not that expensive relatively for someone in employment. And they are contributing to the service being there.”

--------

* Our journalists sometimes use AI tools which are checked by humans for accuracy.

AI was used for this story to transcribe audio from interviews.