[1][2] WCT had recently purchased the Auckland, Hutt Valley and north Wellington suburban bus operations of New Zealand Railways Road Services, then branded CityLine.

[10] In April 2016 NZ Bus announced that it would repower several buses with Wrightspeed gas-turbine hybrid powertrains.

Link services continued to operate in their red, green and orange branding,[18] but with AT Metro logos and other symbols instead of Metrolink.

[citation needed] The new system, called Snapper, builds on RFID technology embedded in cards or in portable devices such as USB sticks.

[20] NZ Bus went ahead with their Snapper roll-out in Auckland despite no other public transport providers signing up for it.

Auckland Transport rolled out their own smart-card ticketing system, the AT HOP card.

NZ Bus suggested that their Snapper system would be able to accommodate Auckland Transport's smart cards.