The campus circuit was introduced on a 12-month trial basis in February, with the aim of addressing the parking problem in the area and linking the University of Otago and Otago Polytechnic with halls of residence.
At yesterday's policy and resource planning committee, Cr Deaker, co-chairman of the regional council-Dunedin City Council passenger transport working party, said on the 1687 trips the campus buses had made in June, there had been a total 1846 passengers.
The figures showed the service had so far been a "crashing failure", he said.
Students had been consulted during development of the service and they suggested a service running as far as the Edgar Centre and up to Moana Pool.
That was considered too big so the loop was shortened.
"It looks like we got it wrong."
Members of the working party had spoken to students since about why they were not using the service, to be told it did not go far enough or that students could walk to all the places on the route.
"We have not got it right so we need to work on that."
Cr Deaker said despite the problems with the campus circuit, overall he was happy with how the other improvements were going.
"More and more are using the buses."
However, the impact of the 25% fare increase, coming into effect on July 1, was yet to be felt.
In 2005, only 64% of Dunedin's bus services were contracted by the regional council, but now 75% were.
The average weekly passenger load in June 2005 was 23,000 compared with 40,000 last month, he said.
To make the improvements the regional council's transport rate take had gone from $1 million in 2005-06 to $3.4 million in 2008-09.
"It's a very encouraging lift in passenger numbers, but ratepayers have made a very big investment to get the lift."
On the Mosgiel loop service there had been four passengers per trip in June and on the express service the June average was 12 a trip into the city and 10 out.
Eight people a trip were taking advantage of the new Concord service.
Cr Bryan Scott, who was also member of the working party, said the challenge was to incrementally improve bus services wherever the ORC could.
