At Connect, we do our best to offer great public transport services. That means providing things we know everyone wants: well-trained drivers, clean buses, reliable timetables and more.

However, there is one issue which has proven hard to settle - music on buses. Some people love hearing the driver's pick of music when they get on board. Others believe music should not be played for the bus and passengers should use headphones if they want to listen to something.

This is also a difficult situation for drivers. We know some want to play music on board for everyone to hear, but are unsure what genres they should play.

We are working out guidelines for music on buses. Between 19 July and 2 September 2024, we asked you a few simple questions:

• Do you mind music being played by drivers for bus passengers to hear?
• If we have music on board, what genres/stations/playlists should be allowed?
• Should we have different guidelines for different times of the day and/or year?

We had 391 survey responses - tino kino te pai! If you click/tap here, you can read the full report which went to our Passenger Transport Committee, which includes statistics about how people answered the questions.

The Passenger Transport Committee was given three options on how to proceed with developing guidelines:

1. Develop guidelines allowing a driver’s choice for music on buses.
2. Develop guidelines for compulsory music on buses.
3. Develop guidelines for no music on buses.

The Passenger Transport Committee voted for Option 3. You can view their discussion and vote in the video below (the discussion starts from 1:25:00).

We will now work with operators to create a set of guidelines for having no music on our services. Until these guidelines are created, you’ll likely still hear music played on some of our services.