The Greater Wellington Regional Council (GWRC) 2019/20 Annual Plan Public Transport (PT) collects revenue of $304.4M to fund the cost of providing the regions PT services. The GWRC calculates Metlink funding by subtracting fare revenue from the cost of the service and then allocates government subsidies and other revenue (such as loans) against the cost of providing each line item of PT services and the final deficit being the amount to be funded through the GWRC Transport Rate as outlined below:
NOTE1: All figures in this analysis are to the nearest dollar. This does not mean to imply the modelled information is accurate to the nearest dollar but only to confirm the costs are accurately being calculated at each phase of this analysis.
NOTE2: This analysis is focussed on who should pay the $70.4M in GWRC Transport Rates for bus and rail PT services and excludes the $1.1M in Transport Rates that supports the Taxi/Mobility PT service.
These Wellington PT Revenue calculations use the same information source and takes a similar approach to the PT Cost Analysis (see Estimating Wellington Bus and Rail Cost for more details). Bus Fares are allocated to areas based on the PTOM fare % revenue estimates supporting bus services for the 2019/20 Annual Plan:
Rail Fare Revenue from each area is estimated using the same Passenger Kilometre model used to split rail costs across the region (see Rail Cost Model for more details), with the rail funding for each region estimated to be:
There is also funding support for:
- Total Mobility (Taxi) costs $3.3M. Note this analysis excludes consideration of GWRC funding for this service
- Funding of the $29.6M in Network Costs which are not directly counted against a particular PT mode.
The $29.6M to fund the Network costs is an important part of delivering the regions bus and rail PT services and so must be included into overall funding. This analysis allocates the Network Costs on a pro-rata basis from the bus and rail costs outlined using the following table from Estimating Wellington Bus and Rail Costs:
Using these percentages we can divide the $29.6M Metlink Network costs between the bus services:
and the rail services:
Adding in these pro-rata Network costs to the previously calculated bus and rail costs gives the following overall revenue estimates that fund Wellington public transport:
Estimated Transport Rates Required to support PT to each area
Of particular note is GWRC Transport Rates contribution that is required to fund bus and rail PT services to each area which is summerised below:
The above table shows:
- Wellington Regional Bus Services require $28.1M in Transport Rates in funding with $18.0M being required for Wellington City bus services and $10.1M being required to subsidise the rest of the region’s bus services.
- Wellington Regional Rail Services require $42.3M in Transport Rates in funding with $4.2M being required for Wellington City rail services and $38.0M being required to subsidise the rest of the region’s rail services.