New Zealand Legislation: Acts

16 Contracting requirements

• (1) A regional council may state in a regional public transport plan that all or any public transport services in the regional council's region that are described in the plan are required to be contracted public transport services; and, as a result, any of those services that are existing commercial services described in the plan are discontinued (in this Act called a contracting requirement).

  (2) A regional council may not adopt a regional public transport plan that imposes a contracting requirement unless it believes on reasonable grounds that—

  • (a) the contracting requirement is consistent with the purpose of the plan, after taking into account the matters referred to in section 19; and

  • (b) the contracting requirement contributes to the implementation of the policies in the plan; and

  • (c) if a service that is to be discontinued is specified in the plan as being needed by the community, a satisfactory alternative public transport service (of any mode) would be available to users of the discontinued service; and

  • (d) appropriate transitional arrangements (which may be any 1 or more of delaying the commencement date of the contracting requirement, providing financial or other assistance to operators, purchasing assets from operators, or anything else) have been or will be made by the council to alleviate as far as practicable any material adverse effects of the contracting requirement on operators of existing commercial services.

  (3) A regional council may not include a contracting requirement in a regional public transport plan that applies to a public transport service that operates outside the region to which the regional public transport plan applies.

  (4) If a regional council specifies 1 or more contracting requirements in a regional public transport plan, it must also specify in the plan—

  • (a) the transitional arrangements referred to in subsection (2)(d); or

  • (b) the process that the regional council will adopt for determining those transitional arrangements.

  (5) For the purposes of subsection (1), services may be described in any 1 or more of the following ways:

  • (a) by specifying in the plan the services to which the contracting requirement applies:

  • (b) by the plan stating that the contracting requirement applies to all services in the region (or a part of the region) other than those specified in the plan:

  • (c) in any other manner.