Otago council backs transport liaison groups for Dunedin and Queenstown

Otago Regional Council has endorsed the return of separate transport liaison groups for Dunedin and Queenstown, creating a proposed forum for riders and other community interests to give feedback on each public transport network. The council announced the decision on 28 September, after a 23 September meeting in Queenstown. The groups are intended to advise and improve communication; the council has yet to confirm who will fill most of their seats.

Transport portfolio co-lead Matt Hollyer said the groups should strengthen feedback from public transport users, operators and community representatives. In the council’s account, they would connect councillors and staff with operators, customers and other local voices. That purpose matters to passengers who want concerns heard, but the decision itself does not establish a change to routes, fares or service levels.

Who is expected to take part

The proposed membership model includes elected members, territorial authorities, operators and regular users of public transport. It also seeks Māori interests and perspectives on accessibility and Total Mobility, alongside representatives from education, health, business, migrant communities, sport, walking and cycling. Hollyer said the precise mix could vary between Dunedin and Queenstown. These are proposed categories of representation, rather than a confirmed list of people or organisations.

Some council places have been assigned. Chair Hilary Calvert and councillor Alan Somerville were appointed to the Dunedin group, while councillors Neil Gillespie and Matt Hollyer were appointed to the Queenstown group. At the September meeting, councillors agreed that the transport portfolio co-leads would work with staff to finalise the proposed membership lists. The council says it will receive an update, including membership details, in November.

A council priority, with separate performance work

Re-establishing the groups forms part of a wider council programme. The council said it agreed in May to progress 34 priority actions across its work areas, including more direct feedback on the Dunedin and Queenstown public transport networks. In its July priority-actions update, it counted nine tracked public transport sub-actions and said 56% of work in that portfolio was new, the highest share among its portfolios. Much of that new work was associated with governance arrangements, including the liaison groups.

The priority-actions update separately calls for public transport performance reporting to support oversight of reliability, accessibility and service effectiveness. That is a different task from establishing an advisory forum. The council has described how it wants the groups to improve communication, but has not reported a service-performance result from them. Whether feedback leads to operational decisions will depend on the groups’ eventual remit and the council’s response to what they raise.

The networks behind the discussion

The two networks carry substantial numbers of passengers. In an August performance update, the regional council reported 3,502,758 Dunedin passenger trips and 2,094,772 Queenstown passenger trips from July 2025 through June 2026. Those totals were 0.3% and 7% higher, respectively, than in the preceding year. The figures describe travel before the liaison groups were endorsed and cannot measure any effect of the new arrangement.

The same council update recorded 151,408 Total Mobility trips in 2025–26, a 6.4% increase. The council describes Total Mobility as transport for people with limited or reduced mobility who cannot easily use typical public transport. Including that perspective in the proposed membership model could put those users’ experience before the groups, although the council has not yet named their representatives or explained how they will be chosen.

A separate Dunedin City Council and Ipsos Quality of Life survey offers older context for one of the two cities. Published in February 2025, it found that 57% of 581 Dunedin respondents said they had used public transport in the preceding 12 months, including 19% who used it at least weekly. In the survey’s 2022 wave, the corresponding figures were 40% and 12%. These are survey responses from Dunedin, not a measure of Queenstown travel or a result of the council’s September decision.

Among Dunedin respondents for whom local public transport was applicable, 68% agreed it was easy to get to, 62% said it was affordable and 54% said it was frequent. Those findings describe perceptions captured in the 2024 survey, rather than current service performance. They help explain why the composition of a rider feedback forum matters: the council’s proposal reaches beyond operators and elected members, but its practical representation remains to be settled.

What happens next

The next stated milestone is the council’s November update on membership. Until then, the public can see which councillors have been appointed and which interests the proposed model seeks to include, but not the final roster or terms of reference. The council has set a minimum meeting cadence; it has not announced a first meeting date. Those details will show how the proposed advisory role works in practice for Dunedin and Queenstown passengers.