As a person who has lived in Switzerland for a year, I have become extremely reliant on public transport. This means, that when I went back to New Zealand for 2 months over summer, I was horrified at the stark contrast between the two countries, and as a result, have become rather outspoken and opinionated on the subject (surprise!)

There are two main problems, as I see it, with public transport in New Zealand. For the purposes of this blog post I am purely going to talk about commuter public transport in Wellington, not intercity transport, which is so bad it's almost non existent.

The two main problems are:

1. The public transport system is substandard
2. As a result, people don't take it, which makes it less likely to receive much improvement.

Obviously, this is a circular problem. The worse it is, the less people will use it, the less money will be spent on it, and so on forever.

So let's examine the first point in further detail.

Why do I think the public transport system is so bad? Well first, I must of course reiterate that I have been living in Switzerland, which has an exemplary public transport system. But even so, I think that Wellington's system is appalling. Here are some of the high (low) lights:

Lack of integrated ticketing.

I need a separate ticket for the bus, train and cable car. Yes, there is the snapper card now, which can be used on all the different buses. Can you use it on the trains? I don't think so but I could be wrong. Certainly you need a separate multi card or prepay card or whatever on the cable car. I didn't try to take any boats while I was in Wellington, but I doubt that is integrated as well. I know that ticket integration is a hard problem to solve, but the fact that other cities have integrated ticketing means that it's not insurmountable.

Why does this matter? People are less likely to take public transport if they have to remember to carry multiple different cards with them, or have to buy a ticket each time they travel. In Switzerland, I am one of the lucky people to own a "GA" - this is a year pass for all trains, buses, trams, boats, in the whole country. Even before I had that, I had a "Halbtax" card, which got me reduced ticketing on all these services, even when I had to buy a ticket before I travelled.

Unreliability.

While there are certainly some good bus routes in Wellington, the majority are extremely unreliable. This is not even to touch on the trains, which are in an awful state (I was stuck in Tawa (Tawa!!) for two hours on a Wednesday night until a kind soul drove me back to Wellington). The timetables are frequently laughable. I remember getting on a half hour service to Gracefield a few years ago, which had come 25 minutes late, and I asked the driver whether he was 25 minutes late or 5 minutes early, and he didn't know. He literally didn't know what route he was supposed to be on, but was just driving in a circle while his shift was on.

Aside from the unreliability of the timetables, I could also complain about the infrequency of the buses. The number 20, for example, finishes very early during the week. I have become quite used to buses and trams coming every 5-15 minutes, so a half hour service seems extremely long to me.

Car culture.

This is really the killer for me, and the hardest to combat. I really think in New Zealand, the car is still seen as a status symbol by many people, and public transport is seen as something for the lower classes. I believe this comes from an American influence actually. I was waiting for a bus in rush hour traffic in Kelburn to go into Wellington, watching car after car drive past with a single person in it, only to get on the bus when it (finally) arrived, to find it almost empty, with only 4 other people on it.

Before I moved to Switzerland, I was completely against the segregation of classes in public transport, but I have come around to believe that it's actually a positive thing. We have a first class and second class system on the trains here - so people that want their status symbol can still travel first class, and everyone else who doesn't care (and doesn't want to spend extra money on it) walks a bit further down the train to the start of the second class carriages, and pays less. It gets the status symbol people out of their cars and into public transport, and helps subsidise it for the rest of us.


I still feel a deep love for New Zealand, and Wellington in particular, but I find this issue so depressing. I wish that New Zealand was being more forward thinking on sustainable (or at least, less unsustainable) transport, and investing in public transport infrastructure, instead of building more roads for more cars. I hate to see the country I love so much falling further and further behind in this area.

After months of planning, my cat finally arrived in Switzerland on Friday, after a long journey from New Zealand. Thinking back to February, when I was desperately looking for apartments, one of my criteria was that my cat would be happy in whatever apartment I found. I was primarily looking for a ground-floor apartment, with a good outside area for her, and that I would be able to put in a cat door. She is 11 years old, and has been an inside-outside cat her whole life, with cat doors since she was about 4, so there was no way I was going to have an apartment where she couldn't go outside, or where she would be limited to a balcony, or where I would have to open doors for her.

Unfortunately, ground-floor apartments are pretty rare. The girlfriend of my boyfriend's flatmate told me that it's pretty common in Switzerland, for people to have cat ladders (katzentreppe (cat stairs) for this reason. Typically, I turned to the internet for this, and found the most amazing website. My absolute favourite is this incredible one, which just blows me away.

At any rate, yesterday my amazing boyfriend built me a cat ladder, with a little help from the neighbour's children. It took a little bit of coercion before the cat would go down the steps, but finally she did, after another neighbour came along and bribed her with chocolate, and I managed to get photos of the first descent:









Awesome.

Here's my general update of what's happened over the last few months of completely shifting my life around.

I'm living in Fribourg, Switzerland. This is a really cute little town, just 20 minutes train ride from the capital, Bern. I think it's supposed to be officially French-German bilingual but it really isn't. French is the language spoken in all the shops and cafes. I don't have any French yet, so this has been a bit of a challenge - the lowest point was trying to buy the official Rubbish bags at the supermarket.

It took quite awhile to find an apartment - I think I looked at between 20 and 25 altogether before I found a perfect apartment just over a bridge from the fringe of town - I'm living in a renovated apartment in an old house on the river bank and it's absolutely perfect. I can hear the bells from the cathedral and I have a good walk to work, 35 minutes, and there's grass and river and a bus stop outside for the mornings where I take longer than normal to get up. I found a vegetable market just over the bridge on Saturday mornings, that has a whole stall dedicated to mushrooms! This made me disproportionately gleeful. After almost a month of looking at apartments that I didn't want, I visited the apartment, signed the contract, moved in, and bought & assembled most of the furniture within a single weekend, with the help of my amazing boyfriend. Apparently this is almost unheard of in Switzerland.

I'm working at Liip, and it's great. I cannot imagine being thrown into a better bunch of people in a foreign city/country/language. I'm working on Moodle, doing some Open Source projects, working with great people, drinking a lot of beer and throwing the pony around. This is not a euphemism! I got to be a part of the group celebrating Liip doing so well at the Best of Swiss Web awards (more on this in another post), and it was just awesome to watch my new work people excel at what they do.

I went to the German Moodlemoot in Bamberg last month and had a great time (finally getting to try the Moodle Mojitos) and met some more Moodlers for the first time - most notably Heinz, who it was fantastic to meet, and David, who dutifully bought me beer for helping him with git, as well as seeing the familiar faces of Martin, Helen and Petr, which always makes me happy. For the first time I was at a conference and people who weren't me talking about Mahara (although of course I talked about Mahara as well), and that was a pretty big buzz in itself.

I love Swiss trains! Travelling back from Bamberg I changed about 4 times, and the change that made me switch onto a Swiss train made me warm and fuzzy. I also like Spätzle, Lindor chocolate, Cardinal (my local beer), Coop, Olivenbrot, the pizza place near work, Lily's, and Freitag (I am happily telling everyone I'm Swiss now that I have a Freitag wallet, which is complete nonsense). lost.ch makes me happy, having my name on my letterbox makes me happy (this does not happen in New Zealand). My boyfriend makes me happy. Inappropriately appending 'chen' or 'li' on the end of everything makes me gleeful and drives everyone else crazy. So far, I don't think much of Cablecom, Migros, apartment hunting, eating Pferd (pony!) or endless dairy products.

I have seen live: Gazpacho twice (although once was in München) and Explosions in the Sky. I hate smoking in bars, but I loved both bands.

As soon as I have conquered German and French (any day now: yeah right!) I will be completely happy.