Urgent emissions reductions through public transport improvements

Council have put in place the $1 and $2 flat fare trial (across all zones) from Feb 2023.

However fares are only part of cracking the Public Transport nut. The other key parts are service and network improvements (i.e where the bus actually goes, how often does it arrive, and how long does the journey take and what people’s experiences were)

So there are still LOTS to do and in process now in this area. eg. National Ticketing programme which would allow any person in NZ to travel on Public Transport using a credit card or their cell.

We know we need to target transport emissions because they are the ‘low hanging fruit’ where we actually currently have the power to make a difference. Compared to Agriculture where we don’t currently have any tools available to force emissions reductions there because govt is yet to either bring Ag into the ETS or regulate them some other way.

In saying that, exploring how we can drastically reduce stock numbers through tight rules/controls on synthetic nitrogen use through (1) above is another way to do this.

Did you know that Stats NZ state there is a dairy cow herd totalling 1.27 million in Canterbury. Dairy NZ state the average urine a cow passes per day is 25 litres. That means 31,750,000 litres of urine go to ground daily in Canterbury or 11,588,750,000 that’s 11 billion, 588 million and 750 thousand litres per year.