Auckland's public transport has a personality, and it is not always a friendly one. A recent column in the NZ Herald's lifestyle section rounds up the highs and lows of riding the city's buses, and it swings wildly between the two. On one end of the scale: a driver who wishes every single passenger a fabulous day, and another who hopped out from behind his safety screen to hand a small girl a plush koala because she was "nice and quiet". On the other end: a man striding down the aisle with his arms out yelling "I can fly... we can ALL fly", a mysterious leak soaking the aisle, a teenager vaping all the way to school, and fellow passengers eating chips while arguing about which flavour they'd shoplifted.
The column's real point, under the jokes, is that Auckland has a manners gap on its buses compared with cities where transit etiquette is well established. In Japan, speaking loudly or using your phone on a train is considered rude. In Auckland, the writer counts at least seven people per trip scrolling YouTube or taking WhatsApp video calls with no headphones anywhere in sight.
Some rules are official. Auckland Transport's conditions of carriage "encourage" passengers to give up seats for older people, pregnant women, and anyone with a disability or mobility issues — an encouragement the writer suggests is honoured mostly in the breach by anyone under 30. Other rules are less formal but clearly enforced by public opinion: no radioactive materials or poison on board, sure, but also perhaps skip the two buckets of KFC, the hacking cough, and the loud racism.
Then there is the setting itself. Auckland commuters have spent years weaving through road cones, concrete cutters and building sites while the City Rail Link gets finished — one young boarding on Queen St summed it up by politely asking the driver when "the road" would get well. The writer's own unwritten rules boil down to brushing your teeth before boarding, keeping your bag off the spare seat, and a philosophy best summarised as: more transport, less public.
For visitors, this is actually useful intel. Auckland is a spread-out city where buses are often the practical way to get between the CBD, the inner suburbs and the coast, and tourists will ride them — to the ferry terminals, to Ponsonby, up Queen St. Knowing that drivers can be unexpectedly charming, that personal space is negotiable, that headphone-free videos are unfortunately normal, and that offering your seat marks you as a decent human being will make the experience smoother. Buy a HOP card, keep your expectations loose, and you might even get the good driver — the one telling the whole bus to keep smiling.
