Public transport in the Wellington Region
public transport network in the Wellington area, New Zealand
Public transport in the Wellington Region, branded under the name Metlink, is the public transport system serving Wellington and its surrounding region. It is the most used public transport system in New Zealand per capita, and consists of electric and diesel buses, suburban trains, ferries and a funicular (the Wellington Cable Car). It also included trams until 1964, and trolleybuses until 2017.
Buses and ferries are privately owned, with the infrastructure owned by public bodies, and public transport is often subsidised. The Greater Wellington Regional Council is responsible for planning and subsidising public transport, and pays around $30 million for bus and train services each year. The system covers Wellington City, Lower Hutt, Upper Hutt, Porirua, the Kāpiti Coast and the Wairarapa.
System
Extent
The Regional Council's Regional Public Transport Plan notes that Wellington had in 2019:
a rail network with around 83 multi-units and 24 carriages, which serve 48 stations.
a bus network with 457 buses serving 3,179 stops on around 232 routes.
two harbour ferries.
a five-station funicular, the Cable Car.
The public source identifies “Public transport in the Wellington Region” as public transport network in the Wellington area, New Zealand. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Public, transport and Wellington.
Why this record matters
A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Public transport in the Wellington Region”, the useful work is to connect “public transport network in the Wellington area, New Zealand” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7258026. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1964, 2017 and 2019.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
- Search vocabulary
- Locating named sources
The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Public transport in the Wellington Region”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Public transport in the Wellington Region primary sources, Public transport in the Wellington Region archive and Public research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Public transport in the Wellington Region”?
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This entry incorporates text from “Public transport in the Wellington Region” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.