Jane Nees BOP Regional Councillor www.janenees.co.nz

A recent meeting of the Bay of Plenty Regional transport committee received a report card on key transport trends and on how well the region has been performing against the targets in its regional land transport strategy. Here is a snapshot of how we are going:

• Fatalities and serious injuries on our roads decreased in 2011.
• Speed contributed to 28 per cent and alcohol contributed to 26 per cent of all deaths and serious injuries.
• There has been little increase in road vehicle numbers since 2007 and fuel consumption has decreased.
• Road congestion in Tauranga increased slightly.
• The distance Tauranga residents travelled in a single-occupancy vehicle was up 12 per cent from the previous period.
• The distance travelled on our regional roads increased three per cent
• People increased the proportion of trips they took on foot, cycling, or on public transport. This year each person on average walked for 32 hours and cycled 69km.
• The annual number of trips per person on urban public transport services went up, and people across the Bay of Plenty used public transport more often. Bus usage reached record numbers, with 2,853,490 passengers using the bus last year.
• Satisfaction with bus services was high, with 96 per cent of Tauranga and Rotorua bus users rating the bus services as good, very good, or excellent.
• 1.003 billion net tonne kilometres (weight x distance) of rail freight was moved to/from/within our region (up 25 per cent).
• More than 332,000 containers were carried on the East Coast main line.

This report card will be posted on the Bay of Plenty Regional Council website and it is intended that the datasets underlying the statistics will also be available.

If you have any views on this or any other issue, please email neesj@xtra.co.nz, phone 07 579-5150 or visit www.janenees.co.nz