Tauranga came last in a poll measuring public transport use in major New Zealand cities, with just one per cent of journeys made on public transport in 2006.
The poll was recorded in 2008 and released to Tauranga City Council by Environment Bay of Plenty this year – prompting a new target of 5.5 per cent public transport use by 2011.

Only one per cent of all journeys in the Bay of Plenty are made on public transport.

Tauranga's sluggish uptake of public transport doesn't surprise Tauranga City Council transport planner Theunis van Schalkwyk.
'It's part of why we are putting in infrastructure improvements – to get that figure up.
The city is growing so much and some of these other areas have an established culture of public transport use. We want to get people to shift towards public transport,” says Theunis.
The other cities in the poll were Auckland, Hamilton, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin. Wellington topped the poll with an average of 75 annual public transport journeys per person against Tauranga's average of nine.