Police have closed parts of Captain Springs Road and Church Road after an assault on the number 74 bus service in Onehunga. Photo: RNZ / Lucy Xia
An advocacy group for the country's bus companies is calling for more security on buses after a woman was stabbed to death on an Auckland bus.
Bus and Coach Association chief executive Delaney Myers told Morning Report there needed to be more people around and on buses to act as a deterrent for bad behaviour and to give people additional confidence using public transport.
A 37-year-old man has been charged with murder after he handed himself in to police on Wednesday, following the stabbing on the number 74 bus in Onehunga.
The woman died at the scene. There were nine other passengers onboard.
As the attack took place, the driver hit the panic button to call for help, and pulled over to get his other passengers off the bus, Auckland Transport's public transport director Stacey van der Putten told Checkpoint.
"The last couple of years we have seen a big increase in anti-social behaviour" on public transport, she said: "There's more of it, people see more of it."
Van der Putten said Auckland Transport aimed to have 80 percent of buses equipped with perspex barriers in the next two years, to protect drivers, but this bus did not have one. All buses are equipped with CCTV cameras, GPS tracking and driver panic buttons.
Staff at the bus depot can respond to driver panic alerts and immediately see what is happening on the bus and dispatch police to the drivers' location. In this case, the CCTV footage was able to be provided to police immediately after the incident by staff at the depot.
However, Myers said there also needed to be "an official presence" on board to help passengers feel more comfortable too. She added it was a task that a driver could not do.
"The driver's job is to drive the bus. And what that means is that there is no one whose role is to actually moderate the behaviour of people coming into those buses."
She acknowledged it would be a "really expensive intervention".
"Obviously, we would love to see personnel on every bus and at every station. But we agree that that's probably not feasible. It is really cost prohibitive.
"When you take into account that well over half of the cost of delivering public transport bus services is wage costs for the driver of that bus. You know, what that would mean, in essence, was a more than 50 percent increase in the overall service delivery costs. So, you know, it's a huge investment."
Auckland's transport network has 54 safety officers at the moment, which van der Putten described as a "limited number", given the size of the network they cover. There are currently another eight in training, but no budget for any more.
Safety officers wear body cameras and are trained in de-escalation but do not have stab-proof vests and have limited powers to intervene. They must also keep themselves safe, van der Putten said.
She said people experiencing concerning behaviour on public transport should always report it, as it helped inform decisions about where the safety officers are sent.
Auckland Transport were also working with some local initiatives to combat crime on buses.
"We need to look at why these issues are occurring ... in the first place ... as a community ", van der Putten said.
"We can't solve this on our own ... more money would be great, but this is not a money conversation, it needs a lot more than that. It needs other agency involvement.
"These social issues - these are very very complex, no amount of guards everywhere is going to solve this."
Myers said far more visibility of the type of transport officers would help.
"We'd like to see them visible on the network and their presence, we believe, will assist with people feeling safer and with people recognising that there is a need to behave themselves on public transport."
