Children are heading back to school on Monday but Covid-19 restrictions will put pressure on bus capacity.

The standards set by Ministry of Transport, Ministry of Health and NZTA National Emergency Response Team (NERT) allow more people on school buses than on other services but we will still have to re-allocate some urban services to help on school runs.

Each weekday morning between 7am and 9am we run more than 2000 services but we expect that around 100 of them will have to be re-directed to school runs.

This means a few urban bus routes will be operating at reduced capacity, please check the AT mobile app which can tell you the capacity on services.

While our priority will be maintaining school bus services, we will also be looking to supplement the busy urban routes with additional capacity. We have worked with our operators to provide additional services where possible, you may see us using buses which would normally be used for things like sight-seeing services.

These buses will have ATHOP readers and will operate on routes like the Northern Express.

We will also have support staff at key bus stops, train stations, and other facilities to manage the safe loading and social distancing of passengers on platforms.

Remember we’re not accepting cash under Alert Level 2 and you get on and off the bus through the back doors. We’d recommend you register your AT HOP card to help with contact tracing if it’s needed. This will also means we can monitor passenger numbers and make fast adjustments to services if required.

For more on Alert Level 2: https://at.govt.nz/about-us/news-events/public-transport-information/

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