The Nelson Tasman Community Transport Trust (NTCTT) will have a Tapawera bus service up and running this week and has plans for a Hira service down the track, but it also needs a new chairperson to oversee the expanding service.
Elena Meredith chairs the charitable trust that was established in 2018 by volunteers wanting to create accessible and sustainable transport services for the community. But 18 months ago she was involved in a serious car accident with her partner and no longer feels she is doing the role justice.
She says she is happy to be a trust member for the service that had been running a community bus to Wakefield and still runs a service between Motueka and Richmond with volunteer drivers. The bus that was used for the Wakefield run will be used for the Tapawera service, while the trust is also planning to create a service between Hira and Atawhai to connect with the eBus service.
“We’re like one of those kaleidoscopes and we have to keep up with what is happening.
“The trust has started to have quite a presence, to have a connection to the eBus service. We’re just about to launch a bus service from Tapawera and we really need a chairperson who is able to be on top of everything. We need somebody with time who is genuinely interested in community services.”
The Tapawera to Richmond bus will run on Tuesdays and the Tapawera to Motueka bus on Wednesdays, at a cost of $6 each way. The bus is limited to five seats each trip and leaves at 9.30am each day, returning to Tapawera by 3pm.
The Motueka bus service operates a nine-seater bus and Elena says it often picks up passengers from home who would otherwise struggle to use the eBus service.
“A lot of the people using the bus from Motueka are not mobile and that group of people have become a little community of their own.
“We’re there to complement the eBus service and we’re not in competition with the eBus. We’re never going to be a commercial venture and we have no interest in making money.”
The trust also operates Māpua’s Willing Wheels where volunteer drivers use their own vehicles to take people where they need to go. While the chair of the trust is a voluntary role, the trust does employ two coordinators to oversee the buses and services, with funding from TDC, the community and local businesses.
