The Hīkoi mō Te Tiriti was the biggest day *ever* for Wellington public transport.
The Greater Wellington Regional Council, via Scoop:
Tuesday was the busiest day on record for Wellington’s public transport network, with an estimated 84,000 rail journeys and 80,000 bus trips.
There was a lot to be proud of in Wellington on Tuesday. One small achievement was the astounding numbers of people who attended the hīkoi via low-carbon bus and train journeys. Our network was able to move them all too; even with significant route changes. It fills me with distilled nerdy joy that our city has a strong enough network that non-Wellingtonians could depend on our buses and trains.
The anecdotes from public transport that morning are nothing short of delightful. People were singing on the trains in. Our stations were full and people were gracious. The chair of the Wellington Regional Council, Daran Ponter, was in Porirua helping people onto the trains. I’ve met Daran before when I was a Labour volunteer: he’s always struck me as a solid character.
I biked to attend the hīkoi but took the train later in the day. While waiting at the station, I chatted with someone who drove all the way from Hamilton to Johnsonville the night before to attend. Her plan post-hīkoi was to take the train out to her car and drive for eight hours to get back home.
Her commitment is nothing short of astounding: it was also her only real option. Imagine if she and the tens of thousands of other protesters could have taken public transport to get here. Imagine how many more of our country’s kuia, kaumatua and tāngata whaikaha (disabled people) we would have seen at the hīkoi.
Let’s hope the hīkoi never has to happen again. Let’s hope the people of Aotearoa never have to return to protect the partnership our country is founded on. Let’s hope that the spirit of protest flows strongly through our citizen’s veins forever.
And let’s hope that through advocacy and action, we can build a country where anyone can make their way to Parliament without costing the earth.
