Composite image with Johnsonville shopping centre sign in the background and four people (Rory and Lorelai Gilmore, Moira and David Rose) in the foreground
Four very active community members

SocietyFebruary 19, 2025

Review: Two weeks of being actively involved in my local community

Guest writer
Composite image with Johnsonville shopping centre sign in the background and four people (Rory and Lorelai Gilmore, Moira and David Rose) in the foreground
Four very active community members

Gilmore Girls, Schitt’s Creek, even The Vampire Diaries – they’re all set in tight-knit neighbourhoods where everyone knows everyone. So what is it like to actually know your neighbours?

My favourite television shows are set in tight-knit neighbourhoods where everyone knows everyone. Characters attend town meetings where they debate local issues, spend time in shared public spaces and have energy leftover to stick their noses in each other’s business. 

But my family has lived in the same area for 16 years and, beyond the people I went to school with, I can’t say I know my community very well. Being actively involved takes more time than most people have to spare. 

Since becoming unemployed, however, I am not most people. 

And so, I challenged myself to spend two weeks immersed in my home town of Johnsonville, Wellington – the suburb perhaps best known for its dying mall. 

I start by making conversation with people in stores: the man who owns the cookware shop I love to mooch in; the girl I went to intermediate with who served me at Burger Fuel; and the guy at the Johnsonville Dairy who accidentally gave me an extra TNT lolly. 

I spend ages yarning about the joys of crafting to a woman who works at The Spot, which sells incredible handmade goods for ridiculously cheap. She tells me she is one of over 40 people who contribute to the co-op. I tell her it’s my favourite store in Johnsonville and we take turns fawning over the racks of intricate doll clothes. It’s the most heartwarming conversation I’ve had with a stranger in a while, one I would’ve normally cut short if I had places to be. 

For two weeks, I regularly visit the library inside Waitohi, our shiny new-ish community hub, to read and people-watch. When I feel like rotting on my couch, I drag myself to the library to rot there instead and it makes me feel less alone. 

One afternoon, a staff member talks me through how to use the Hive, a room kitted out with 3D printers and sewing machines that I get excited to use. On another occasion, I follow the library’s activity calendar and show up for a scheduled colouring-in session, only to find I’m the only person who remembered it was happening. I sit on a high chair and colour by myself for an hour and a half before accepting it as a flop. 

On the left is a shelf filled with doll clothing and on the right, a completed colouring in stencil
A hit (doll clothes) and a flop (colouring in)

Instead of spending my Friday evening hanging out in town, I drag my high school friend Amberleigh to Johnsonville’s Keith Spry Pool, where I learned to swim in primary school. We do wobbly underwater handstands, watch kids squabble over floaty toys and laugh. I feel extra brave so I test out the diving pool for the first time and realise the bottom doesn’t seem so far away anymore. 

We then stop by 1841 for a frozen margarita and I regret not having visited the restaurant in years because I immediately get a kick out of its Johnsonville-themed decor and the menu which boldly dubs the suburb “J-Vegas”. 

Three images showing various angles of 1841 the restaurant and bar
What a place

In the second week, I watch my local Toastmasters’ annual speech competition at the Johnsonville Community Centre and make friends with the mum sitting next to me.  

People decades older than me share their coming out stories, the pros and cons of a bucket list and the urge to build a time machine. Some have a nervous tremor while others perform with bravado. Between speeches they ask me to stand up and introduce myself, and everyone listens to me just as respectfully. 

It strikes me that people are living full lives inside buildings I walk past every day without a second thought.

The next day, I join a group that meets weekly to combat loneliness. We start by sharing our whakapapa and talking about how the past week has been. Then I sit back and fight the urge to giggle as the ragtag bunch debates whether Lady Gaga is evil and if the popular “Out of Africa” evolution theory means we’re all technically African.

Things get icky when two members launch into a sales pitch about how rich we could be if we all become door-to-door salespeople. It’s a shame because I was having fun, but my patience wears thin so I leave. 

I make an effort to be active in my community online as well. 

My Google review for the Johnsonville Shopping Centre starts with “look, it has the necessities…” while my five-star rating of gift store Welly Collective’s Johnsonville branch gets an appreciative reply from the owner. 

I also join a bunch of gifting groups on Facebook and gleefully give away books, a chocolate fountain and a cupcake ferris wheel. 

Then there’s all the random shit I do just because I have the time.

  • I email Woolworths to figure out why my local supermarket’s soft plastics bin disappeared for a while and am assured it was a temporary issue, likely due to cleaning or a shortage of bags. 
  • I stop by a spirituality expo and watch vendors sell crystals and read tarot. 
  • I whip out my phone and Google image-search an unfamiliar fruiting bush I’ve spotted on the walk home, identifying it as the poisonous poroporo plant and steering clear of it. 
  • I submit carefully considered feedback on Wellington City Council’s proposals for a new playground in Johnsonville, poring over the documents for each design and arguing why option two is superior. 

Every random side quest is a feather in my hat, an invisible badge of honour that says “I am one with Johnsonville”. 

On the last official day of my experiment, I buy an iced matcha from the newly reopened cafe Refresh Espresso and congratulate them on their comeback before rushing over to the community centre’s Wednesday afternoon board games session. 

I arrive late and all the retirees there are engrossed in games I’ve never played. A pair of women battling it out in Rummikub allow me to sit and watch their game in silence, insisting they have to leave soon and telling me to return next week if I want to learn myself. 

But generosity gets the better of them and soon they start drip feeding me rules and strategies. I’m invited to play a new round with them, and then another. Playing against them demands my full focus and my cheeks warm from all the praise they give me for being a quick learner. 

When we finally pack up, I realise my new friends stayed an hour longer than they said they would for a girl they’d never met before.

I’ve lived in Johnsonville for so long, I assumed the best things it could offer me were basic shops and frequent buses out of the area. What’s worse, I assumed I had nothing to gain from getting to know the people here. The past two weeks showed me I was wrong on both fronts. Sure, Jville is far from the most exciting place in Wellington. But it’s also my home, and it’s worth being proud of. 

I probably won’t become a door-to-door salesperson any time soon but I just might rummage around second hand stores to see if I can get my hands on my very own Rummikub. 

Keep going!
a yellow tinted street with a cartoon sun in the corner and a red bus highlighted in the centre of the image
If the air conditioning is malfunctioning, catching the bus can be a sweltering affair (Image: Shanti Mathias)

SocietyFebruary 19, 2025

Boiling on the bus: Dodgy aircon is putting passengers off and drivers at risk

Contributing writer
a yellow tinted street with a cartoon sun in the corner and a red bus highlighted in the centre of the image
If the air conditioning is malfunctioning, catching the bus can be a sweltering affair (Image: Shanti Mathias)

Wellington travellers say their buses are so hot they’re often forced to get off early and walk. Shanti Mathias explores the impact of non-functioning air conditioning on public transport. 

When Bella, a young professional living in Wellington, thinks about taking the bus, her first thought is “Ugh”. The bus might be an affordable and convenient way to get through the city without a car, but the reality, no matter the season, is sweaty, often far hotter than the outside. 

“On Saturday, I got the bus home from the airport. Outside it was 21 or 22 degrees,” she says. “Inside, hot air was blasting, like a heater was on. I was sweating and feeling sick; as we got closer to my stop, I wanted to get off early and just walk with my bags.” By the time she disembarked, she felt light-headed. 

Since December 1, 2024, Wellington’s Metlink has received 140 complaints about high temperatures on buses. That’s a small percentage of the 250,000 bus trips that have taken place in the last two and a half months. Many of the complaints were particular to a specific bus model whose aircon system is now being repaired, says Fiona Abbot, Metlink’s senior manager of assets and infrastructure. “Like any mechanical system, even with regular servicing things can go wrong, but Metlink is committed to the comfort of its passengers and resolving any issues as soon as possible,” Abbot said in a statement. 

a blue sky and a bus stop sign
On sunny days, waiting for the bus can be as hot as the vehicle might be inside (Photo: Shanti Mathias)

Bella found the experience of catching regular buses so unpleasant that it was a key reason she moved into central Wellington, where she could walk to work. Her friend Lucy, who has to catch Wellington’s number 2 bus to and from work, can’t avoid the heat. “I get motion sick really easily, and the windy roads combined with the heat make me feel sick,” she says. “And if I feel that hot, how hard is it for the bus drivers?” 

Kevin O’Sullivan, secretary of the Tramways Union, which represents bus drivers, has been hearing a lot from drivers suffering in the heat. “Ever since we started having hot days [this summer], it’s been bad,” he says. O’Sullivan says that many of the electric buses, and the capital’s ageing fleet of diesel buses, have recurrent problems with the air conditioning. 

While bus drivers can see the internal bus temperature on their dashboard, they can’t adjust the temperature. Most buses don’t have windows that open, since windows shouldn’t be open if the air conditioning is functioning correctly. O’Sullivan has heard from drivers whose buses have regularly had temperatures in the mid-30s. “I heard that a bus driver in Wainuiomata, with no other health conditions, had to stop the bus due to the heat last week,” he says. “When he got out, he collapsed due to heat exhaustion.”

Overheating buses don’t just make commuting a sticky misery for passengers and present a work safety issue for drivers: they also circumvent a legal requirement for new buses in New Zealand’s major cities to have effective cooling and heating. According to section 4.12 of NZTA’s bus quality standards, this temperature needs to be within two degrees of 20 degrees Celsius when the temperature outside is between 0 to 30 degrees, and the system must be independent of the driver changing the settings. All new buses are required to have air conditioning to heat or cool the bus as needed. 

Previous versions of the standards justify this specifically in relation to cars: “in order to compete with the attractiveness of the private car and encourage more patronage, all urban buses should have air conditioning,” reads the 2014 edition of the same document. Clearly, this isn’t working for some passengers. “The temperature of the bus is one reason I prefer to drive,” says Lucy. 

a bus window, with the long, straight road of The Parade stretching out in front of the bus
If air conditioning isn’t working, the top floor of electric double decker buses (like Wellington’s number 1 route, pictured) can be sweltering (Photo: Shanti Mathias)

In Auckland, train temperatures are generally set at 21.5 degrees Celsius. “This gradually increases the warmer it is outside, so that the difference between the inside and outside isn’t too extreme,” said Rachel Cara, AT’s group manager of public transport, in a statement. On buses, temperature is kept in the 18-22 degree range, but may be affected by having more passengers on board, thanks to the reality of human body heat. “It’s important we get the balance right to make sure that buses aren’t too hot when there are more passengers or too cold when there are less passengers,” Cara said. Operators are required to take buses with identified issues out of service until they are repaired. 

If drivers can’t change the temperature, what can they do about an overheating bus? “There’s an electronic system where people log a bus number and the fault, and the AC is supposed to be repaired,” O’Sullivan says. “But often those buses are on the road the next day, with nothing being done about it.” The union has asked drivers whose buses are malfunctioning to head to the bus terminal and wait for a replacement bus. In emails seen by The Spinoff, the Tramways Union has told Greater Wellington Regional Council that this may cause service disruption, saying “safety must take priority over service failures”. 

What happens in summer also applies in winter. Bus drivers are asked not to leave their engines running while waiting at the end of a line. “If you’re parked in a suburban area, waiting to start your route, what are you supposed to do? Sit in the cold bus for half an hour?” O’Sullivan says. He sees the issues with heating and cooling on buses as due to “cost cutting”, noting that Wellington’s more expensive airport bus doesn’t have the same issues as other electric models.

More Reading

    Discomfort for travellers isn’t the only issue with rising temperatures and public transport. Heat can cause railway tracks to expand, meaning trains have to go more slowly or be cancelled. Responding to heat while keeping public transport operating is a challenge faced by cities around the world: research shows hotter outdoor temperatures mean people move around less, cutting down on non-essential travel. While it’s important to make sure public transport is comfortable for travellers, people who don’t have a choice to travel suffer particularly in heatwaves – like in Mumbai, where the urban poor often have to walk to work, increasing their heat exposure. Solutions like planting trees at bus stops have been trialled to make public transport safer when it’s hot, which is especially important given that car traffic can generate additional urban heat. 

    Summer or winter, overheated buses can seriously discourage people from taking public transport. “In winter, you get on and have to take your jacket off, you’re still melting. At some point you can’t take any more layers off,” says Bella. Lucy finishes the thought. “It’s as if they’re expecting you’ll get on the bus naked.”

    Society