Regional councillors are being asked by staff to delay a decision on changes to Tauranga's Bayhopper and Schoolhopper services for another six months.

The decision is expected to be made by the BOP Regional Council Transport Committee on Friday.

Staff are recommending the council take more time to investigate solutions to the issues that have been raised as part of the blueprint engagement.

To enable that to happen, the regional council needs to extend the existing Tauranga Bayhopper, Tauranga Schoolhopper, Katikati and Omokoroa and Te Puke contracts through until the end of 2018 – a further six month extension.

The NZTA has previously agreed to extend these contracts by six months through until July 2018, and at the time indicated it was comfortable extending them by 12 months, according to the staff report in the committee agenda.

A further formal request will need to be made to the agency for a further six month extension, but every indication is that it will be approved.

Contract extensions may come at an additional cost. Council staff have had preliminary negotiations with the bus contractors to ascertain their willingness to extend and under what conditions. So far all indicated they are willing, but more detailed negotiations are required to establish the cost of any extension.

Even if that is not known by Friday, staff are recommending the council make a decision in principle to extend the contracts, subject to understanding the financial implications of doing so.

Much of the feedback was received through the drivechange.co.nz website, which was activated through an intensive multi-media campaign attracting over 6000 unique visitors over the feedback period. There were 1370 survey responses. The website accounts for more than 90 per cent of all feedback.

In addition to the feedback, a petition of 1700 signatures was received on June 6.

The level of feedback received through the engagement process was significant and while much media attention related to Schoolhopper changes, council staff say the level of response on Bayhopper services was equally significant.

Ninety per cent of the feedback opposes the proposed school hopper changes. Five per cent of the feedback in neutral and three per cent supports the change.

Most respondents (29 per cent) did not state the school.

But there were 21 per cent for Aquinas College, 11 per cent for Tauranga Intermediate, 10 per cent for Bethlehem College, and seven per cent for Mount Maunganui College. The remainder of the schools made up 22 per cent of the feedback.

The main concerns are students being required to change buses; danger crossing roads; cost of the service being too expensive; lack of shelter; potential length of time students will be required to travel on public transport; discomfort with students travelling with members of the public, often referenced as 'stranger danger”; and students being required to walk up to 1km to catch the bus, particularly in bad weather.

The current Schoolhopper service began in February 2015. It is based on 45 routes with an estimated 2016/17 contract cost of about $2.7 million. The annual cost is funded by about $700,000 in fares and $1 million each from the NZTA and Regional Council (giving a fare recovery of about 27 per cent).