Kia ora Greater Wellington Regional Council,

This email contains three requests under the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act.

1) Please provide me with a list of the titles, dates, and filing system reference numbers of documents held that model the provision of passenger bus routes between:
a. Porirua and Lower Hutt
b. Porirua and Petone
c. Tawa and Lower Hutt
d. Tawa and Petone
e. Grenada and Lower Hutt
f. Grenada and Petone
g. Johnsonville and Lower Hutt
h. Johnsonville and Petone
i. Newlands and Lower Hutt
j. Newlands and Petone
k. Woodridge and Lower Hutt
l. Woodridge and Petone

2) Please provide me with a list of the titles, dates, and filing system reference numbers of documents held that model the provision of passenger rail transport between:
a. Porirua (or stations further north and south) and Petone
b. Porirua (or stations further north and south) and Lower Hutt

3) If the Council decides that good reason exists under sections 6 or 7 of LGOIMA to withhold any information from me in response to requests (1) and (2) above, I separately request under section 18(a)(ii) of LGOIMA to be given the grounds in support of each instance of information being withheld. If the Council is unsure how to comply with section 18(a)(ii) requests, please refer to the Ombudsman’s case note here: https://www.ombudsman.parliament.nz/reso... .

Under section 15(2), my preferred means of receiving this information is in a text-searchable format, either a Word document or spreadsheet using columns for document title, date, and filing system reference.

I look forward to receiving the Council’s response as soon as reasonably practicable.

Ngā mihi,

Andrew Ecclestone

Dear Mr Wallace-Thexton,

I'm sorry that you don't understand "'documents held that model the provision' of Bus and Train services."

I am seeking information from GWRC that concerns any exploration by the Council (or contractors for which it now holds the records) of the options for running passenger bus and/or train routes between the locations outlined in my request.

GWRC's Regional Public Transport Plan (https://www.gw.govt.nz/your-region/plans... ) sets out (on pages 31-32) the criteria for considering possible new transport connections.

NZTA is currently exploring the possibility of a building a new road between Grenada and Petone (https://nzta.govt.nz/projects/petone-to-...). The Agency claims (page 5 of the Business Case https://nzta.govt.nz/assets/projects/pet... ) that there are 70,000 vehicle movements per day along the current SH1 and SH2 between Grenada and Petone. Seventy thousand vehicle movements could be partially offset by GWRC/Metlink providing bus or train routes between the places mentioned in my request. I would like to see the information relating to any GWRC consideration of providing such passengers services.

I had been hoping to reduce your workload by only seeking the filenames, dates and filing system references for this information. If this request does not make sense to you, then I'll amend it to request the information about the exploration of possible routes itself.

Yours sincerely,

Andrew Ecclestone

Dear Ms Gain,

Thank you for GWRC's response of 27 March 20206. It appears GWRC has misinterpreted my request for information.

In your response you wrote "At this stage in that project there is insufficient information for Greater Wellington to consider implementing a new route, or altering an existing route, along this proposed road."

I am not seeking information about the possible provision of bus services along the expressway proposed by NZTA to run between Grenada and Petone.

I am seeking information held by GWRC about any exploration it has done of provision of bus routes between the places I listed in my request *in the past*, before this expressway was proposed.

NZTA has proposed building a road that will cost at least $2.5 billion to build (for which it has no funding), but has done no modelling of whether the proposed road is unnecessary because its claimed traffic congestion problem could be solved by GWRC providing public transport between these locations.

I therefore want to know whether the Regional Council, which is responsible for public transport in the Wellington region, has ever explored the provision of bus services between two main centres of population and work in the region, Porirua and Lower Hutt, and places in between. And I want the filing references to any documents recording this.

GWRC also appears to have limited itself when interpreting my request for information about passenger rail services between Porirua and Lower Hutt. While it may not have done any work to explore the possibility of building track to join the Kapiti and Hutt lines, there is already a junction of those two lines, at Kaiwharawhara. I would therefore like GWRC to search its records to establish whether it holds any information that relates to a passenger rail service travelling between Porirua and the Hutt that utilises existing track and after travelling south from Porirua to Kaiwharawhara changes direction and then travels north on the Hutt Line to Petone and/or Lower Hutt. And vice versa.

I hope this is now clear enough for GWRC to understand, and apologise if my brevity caused difficulties for people trying to respond to my request.

I look forward to receiving a response to this request as soon as practicable.

Yours sincerely,

Andrew Ecclestone