The Government has ruled out putting a cap on the number of subsidised taxi trips disabled and older New Zealanders can take, after a consultation that drew 564 written submissions and brought about 200 people to public meetings.
Transport Minister Chris Bishop and Disability Issues Minister Louise Upston released the decisions from the review of the Total Mobility scheme on Friday. Three of the six proposals the Ministry of Transport put to the public have been dropped, and they are the three the disability sector objected to most loudly.
There will be no nationally mandated trip caps, no requirement to produce documentary evidence of an impairment before being assessed, and no compulsory periodic reassessment of people already in the scheme.
“We also heard clear concerns about some of the proposals we consulted on,” Upston said in the announcement. “After considering the feedback, the Government has decided not to proceed with mandatory documentary evidence requirements, mandatory periodic reassessments, or nationally mandated trip caps.”
Total Mobility pays part of the fare when someone cannot use an ordinary bus or train. More than 120,000 people are registered, up from about 108,000 in 2022, and the scheme now covers roughly three million trips a year, compared with 1.8 million in 2018. It is paid for jointly by the Crown, the National Land Transport Fund and the regional councils that run it, which is why the subsidy rate and the fare cap can differ depending on where you live.
“The scheme plays an important role in supporting people to live independently and participate in community life by ensuring they can get to appointments, do their shopping, and spend time with friends and whΔnau,” Bishop said.
Four proposals are going ahead. The Government will adopt a national purpose statement for Total Mobility and write it into NZTA’s requirements, which is intended to stop the scheme meaning different things in different regions. NZTA has been asked to review the funding settings for wheelchair accessible vehicles, including the per trip payment made to drivers, a rate that has not moved since 2005. It will also review provider standards and safeguards, with an eye to whether ride hailing companies could be approved to carry Total Mobility passengers. And officials will develop a proposal for a national public transport concession for scheme members, which would include free fares for a companion travelling with them.
The wheelchair vehicle payment is the item most likely to matter on the ground. Operators have argued for years that a rate frozen for 21 years does not cover the cost of buying, converting and running a van with a ramp and restraints, and that the fleet has been shrinking as a result. A review is not a rate rise, but it is the first time the figure has been formally reopened.
What the review did not touch is the money. The subsidy itself was settled eight months before these decisions landed. On 16 December 2025 the Government announced that the fare subsidy would fall from 75 per cent to 65 per cent from 1 July this year, and that regional fare caps would drop by an average of about 10 per cent. That change is now in force. The Ministry of Transport expects it to cut a forecast funding shortfall of about $236 million over 2025 to 2030 down to roughly $26 million. A one off $10 million was given to public transport authorities to get through 2025-26.
Bishop’s argument at the time was that the scheme had grown faster than the money behind it. “Total Mobility’s costs have been escalating unsustainably since changes in 2022 increased the fare subsidy from 50 percent to its current 75 percent,” he said in December. Upston’s point was that 65 per cent is still more generous than the 50 per cent that applied before 2022.
The disability sector did not accept the framing. Disabled Persons Assembly chief executive Mojo Mathers said in December that Total Mobility was an essential service, and that “this cut to Total Mobility on top of a cost-of-living crisis will only aggravate hardship in an already struggling population”. Labour said at the time the Government was making life harder and more expensive for disabled New Zealanders.
So the sequence matters. The cost saving was decided first and consulted on separately. The review that reported on Friday was about how the scheme is administered, not what it pays, and the parts of it that would have squeezed users further have now been dropped. For someone who uses the scheme, the practical position is that their fare went up on 1 July, but nobody is going to limit how many trips they take or make them prove their impairment again to stay eligible.
The unresolved question is the national concession. Free companion fares on buses and trains would be a genuine gain for people who cannot travel alone, and it would shift some journeys off subsidised taxis and onto public transport, which is cheaper for everyone. But it is still only a proposal to be developed, with no timeframe and no funding attached, and it will land in the middle of an election year in which transport and disability spending are both contested. Voters who want to compare where the parties sit on this kind of spending can use our voting tool.
The full review documents are on the Ministry of Transport website.
Do you use Total Mobility, or drive for it? Tell us in the comments below what the July change has meant for you.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job π
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