Superflyte, Superflyte, my kingdom for Superflyte

The Winter has not started yet but the Discontent has. Regular like Groundhog Day, Fullers manages to fuck up its service as soon as the tourists have disappeared and the pesky commuters demand getting to work and home on time in a daily and orderly fashion.
But that was never part of Fullers' business plan, who are you kidding?. Winter is for refashioning, engineering (including fitting in engines that actually work), surveying boats, readying them for the Summer season, taking them out of service as they see fit and replacing them with the floating yellow bath ducks they bought from Explore.
But these island peasants keep turning up at Matiatia wanting public transport, those ingrates on monthly passes and, worse, those who demand being carried for free courtesy of the taxpayer. Don't they know that tourists on $40 return fares bring in the dosh which makes it all worthwhile, and those on discounts should really be happy to find a place in steerage class, packed in like sheep en route to Saudi Arabia?
The peasants have been revolting for quite a while - for the best part of the past 20 years - but now finally have awakened the political class and the media to their case, after rumours of threatening violent action, an extinction rebellion aimed at saving Waiheke island life.
Local body bodies, local Councillors and local MPs are now running around like headless chickens, gathering information and 'experiences' (include exact dates and times, please!) to bring to another meeting with Fullers management, only to be laughed out of the office, since everybody knows (or should know) that it is never the fault of the company, but always the weather, the diesel prices, the passenger numbers, the staff morale and sickness, the Labour government and the lack of free market. No amount of 'consultations' or 'demonstrations' will be of any use. If they had been in the past we would now not be on square one again.
There are only two solutions (and if you have any others, I'd like to hear them):
1. The government grows a pair and reforms the PTOM Act abolishing the exempt service status of Fullers, bringing it under the integrated umbrella of Auckland public transport, with all tenders, regulations, support and penalties for non-performance included. If Fullers manages to remain exempt it should lose all its public subsidies such as the Hop fare system, preferential wharf access and gold card subsidies. If they want a pure free market, we should give it to them with knobs on.
2. The Council should own (or franchise) its own ferry service and go in competition with Fullers. Gold and Hop cards should only be valid on this service. (As an aside, the $2m gold card subsidy given to Fullers came in very handily in its market battle with Explore who never properly qualified for it). This should provide a level of public transport enjoyed by first world cities and get us out of being beholden to government-guaranteed private monopoly, and leave the ripping-off of tourists to Fullers.

The 180-min journey to work

The Waiheke Marketplace newspaper ran a piece with commuter experiences on the ferries, sadly it's not online. A slightly different article, but based on the same information appeared in the East & Bays Courier.
It inspired me to fire off the following letter to the editor:

Dear George,

The fluffy piece of salad day journalism by Nicola Murphy and Lyndal Jefferies "Work's a 180-min journey" requires necessary balance. For Waiheke commuters, the journey to and back from work in the city involves one of the most expensive commuter fares in the world. At $4,000 a year, what do you actually get? Boats that rarely arrive at the advertised time causing missed bus and train connections. Cancellations and breakdowns occuring like clockwork, often mid-channel and which require a return and transfer (but, mercifully, a $10 compensation voucher). Those breakdowns are euphemistically referred to by Fullers as "unplanned maintenance" and they come on top of annual boat surveys that seem to take longer every year.
You may think that the Waiheke commute is a damn sight better thing than sitting in a gridlocked motorway every morning, but your 'reverse commuter', Mr Schippers, enjoying the "easy parking" in Devonport, should have mentioned he can actually park for free, a privilege not enjoyed by islanders, who are unique in the Auckland public transport system of not having a free park & ride facility that North Shore busway commuters take for granted. Perhaps this is because the Waiheke Fullers route is actually not a public transport service but communal private transport delivered by a monopoly company.
It's my impression that Fullers actually doesn't like commuters. It prefers the $35 return tourist fares because revenue per passenger is so much juicier. Tourists don't turn up in Winter so boats can be taken out of service at random, and bugger the resulting cramped conditions for the captive daily customer. In Summer, boat charters and private cruises for corporate Christmas parties yield so much more profit it pays to cram commuters onto the smaller vessels, sardine-style.
The vaunted aspects of the boat commute - the community-style interactions between passengers and the opportunity to actually make the time work for you - are a little overdone. There is, for example, no free wi-fi on board, something that is increasingly common on public transport overseas and even on inner city Auckland buses, trains and even Sea Link to Half Moon Bay.
As long as Waiheke is not integrated into the Auckland public transport system (we haven't heard whether Hop will come to Fullers, let alone at $14.50 for a day pass valid for travel across Greater Auckland, a fare touted for travelling a similar distance on other Auckland public transport modes) Fullers - and Sea Link - will continue to abuse their monopoly position and slowly strangle life on Waiheke for all but the well-heeled. The island's gentrification and unaffordability will continue and the only beneficiary is Fullers' bottom line.

UPDATE: The letter (slightly edited) was published, good on ya, George.
UPDATE: The original article has been retracted by the Marketplace after one of the interviewees complained he wasn't actually interviewed for the piece.

"Fast, reliable and cheap". Yeah, right

An interesting article in the NZ Herald on the length of time of commuting by car; and the dearth and cost of public transport costing Auckland a higher ranking in the world of liveable cities.

Auckland has again been rated bottom of a class of 14 cities for the average number of public transport trips taken annually by its residents.
They took an average of just 44 trips a year, compared with 74 trips by Wellingtonians, 124 by Melbourne residents and 168 by those in Ottawa.
The report noted that Auckland's public transport patronage has risen 8.5 per cent since the study.
Aucklanders also paid the highest average fares of the surveyed cities, of 24c for every kilometre travelled, compared with 17c in Wellington and 11c in Perth.

To which we can easily answer: you city dwellers in Auckland have got it sweet. We, Waihekeans (and you poor tradies trotting over to the island every morning), pay $1 per kilometre travelled.
That's the price we pay for a private monopoly. "Public transport" is an alien concept on the Waitemata.