ARTA not looking after the children

Readers of this blog may remember my posts over the past 6 months about issues related to ARTA and children riding public transport. (They all include the "ARTA" label.)

Note that all I am doing is asking ARTA to implement in practice the policies they already have in place. I am not asking them to do anything they have not already committed to do.

You would think taking action to ensure children's rights under ARTA's policy would be a top priority. Apparently not, given my experience this year.

The issues have been:

1. Children frequently have to pay the adult fare, even when accompanied by their parents, because ARTA does not provide any guidance as to what identification is required to establish entitlement. Bus drivers have absolute discretion. The policy says children aged 5 to 15 inclusive ride for the child's fare.

2. School children are frequently denied access to non-school buses in the morning and told (Birkenhead Transport) to get the school bus.....which left 40 minutes prior. This is contrary to policy.

3. The child pricing policy was incorporated into the "School Student Discounts" of the revamped web site despite applying to all children, including those who are not school students or not school students in Auckland. It seems bizarre to include the super-set of all children from anywhere within the sub-set of children who attend school - by implication - in Auckland. This construction seems to be intended to create confusion rather than clarify the pricing issue related to children.

These points have all been raised wth ARTA since January. They have all been accepted as valid by ARTA. Action to correct them has been promised by ARTA. I've spoken to the head of PR, the head of Customer Service and a senior marketing exec...and all agreed these problems were valid.

Six months later, almost nothing has been done. Birkenhead Transport has stopped refusing to let school kids on regular buses most of the time, but it was still happening two weeks ago. The driver concerned has been spoken to, I'm told, by his supervisors.

I think I'm beginning to understand that ARTA doesn't actually have the power and authority it needs to have in order to do the job it's trying to do. They can't even get their web site updated.....or simply say they won't do it.

I've more or less given up on them. The senior exec who was looking into these issues has not responded in substance to my last two e-mails on the subject. The political route appears to be the only one that can bring these issues to a resolution.