Buses are supposed to be on time? In Auckland?

Bus services just don't run on time in Auckland. My usual experience is that a bus supposed to run every 15 minutes actually means that you wait for 45 minutes and then three come all at once.

I've always assumed that this is just how things that are supposed to work. The advertised interval is a theoretical ideal, like a perfectly frictionless slope, a rational decisionmaker or "all else equal". If the buses ever stuck to their advertised intervals in Auckland, I'd expect it to make world news headlines, perhaps accompanied by trumpets and angels playing harps.

Apparently, I was wrong:

"Stagecoach's claim that its Link bus service runs every 10 minutes has been ruled misleading after a passenger complained of sometimes waiting for up to 40 minutes." (NZ Herald)

Apparently, somebody had the idea of laying a complaing to the Advertising Standards Authority about Stagecoach's "false advertising". Frankly, I'm surprised there are people naïve enough to believe that advertised bus timetables should be taken seriously, never mind that they would think to lay a false advertising complaint.

Unfortunately, the Advertising Standards Authority can't force Stagecoach to clean up their act and make the buses run on time. So all that might happen is that the Link bus will change its advertising from "Every 10 minutes" to something more true, like "irregularly but frequently".