Breaking news
The company that owns most of Wellington’s buses accepts there is a problem with advertising wraps obscuring passengers’ vision on some buses and is taking action to remedy it.
NZ Bus chief commercial officer Ian Turner says the contractor that put the Festival of the Arts wrap on some buses, almost totally blocking the bus windows, has been told to fix the problem. The company had also reminded the advertising agency responsible for advertisements on buses that wraps are meant to allow unobstructed vision from at least 50 per cent of window seats.
His comments follow an article on this blog last month that said Wellington buses are being stickered with new-style, solid-vinyl advertising wraps that are impossible to see through. The worst examples are some Go Wellington (formerly Stagecoach) buses advertising the International Festival of the Arts, which sport wraps that prevent any visibility at all out the side and rear windows, creating a disorienting tunnel effect for passengers, as the only vision is out the front. Old-style wraps have perforations that allow good vision.
The big Go Wellington logos on the sides of some of the buses repainted in yellow also irritatingly block the view out some windows, as does the Valley Flyer branding being applied to Hutt Valley buses. Go Wellington and Valley Flyer are brands of NZ Bus, the trading company that bought the Wellington and Auckland Stagecoach operations in November 2005. NZ Bus is in turn owned by Infratil, the majority shareholder in Wellington Airport.
In response, Ian Turner says NZ Bus is looking into the problem. “Window coverage has become more of an issue than used to be the case.” There were a number of aspects to this:
- “The problem with the Festival buses is of our own making, because we are responsible for that signage under our arrangement with the Festival. The contractor who put up this signage omitted to cut around the graphics, and we didn’t check up on their work. Consequently there is a large acreage of white material on the windows which obscures visibility. The contractor has been instructed to remedy this, but all their staff have been on vacation. They will be back on deck [this week] and will remedy the situation then.”
- “The company that sells the advertising on our buses has been allowing advertising agency creative people to ‘push the envelope’ as regards the extent of the permitted window coverage (we have a rule that advertising on windows, even with the ‘see through’ material, should be positioned such that completely unobstructed vision is possible from at least 50 per cent of window seats). I have reminded the bus advertising company of our requirement.”
Ian Turner adds: “We are still investigating your suggestion that the ‘see through’ material used by the bus advertising company has changed and is more opaque than used to be the case. On the face of it, nothing has changed, but I will press them further on this. It is also possible that the visibility problem is resulting from a combination of the advertising material on the outside of the windows and the anti-scratch protective film that we have installed on the inside of the windows. It will take a bit more investigation to establish if this is so, and what the solution might be.
“I have spoken to the manager of our Valley Flyer operation, who has spent a fair bit of time talking to his customers since the launch of the new brand, and he tells me that he has received no other complaints about the new graphics that partially cover the windows on his buses. Nevertheless, I have asked about the feasibility of using see through material for the graphics instead of solid vinyl, and we will get a bus done this way to see if it makes a worthwhile difference.”
NZ Bus appears to be a company that takes passenger comments seriously. If there are further developments with this, I’ll be reporting them.
4 Comments
January 22, 2008 at 5:36 pm
And congratulations again.
January 22, 2008 at 5:51 pm
Congrats and thanks from me too!
Oh, and you’re absolutely right about the buses on the Karori Park route. I had an unfortunate bus scheduling issue today and ended up on a 3 which could barely make it up Glenmore St, not that one could tell as 1/3 of the seats faced backwards (?!) and it was very very loud.
I want a paua shell bus!
January 22, 2008 at 8:42 pm
Thank you both, you are too kind.
November 10, 2009 at 7:53 pm
So, do you know the outcome of trying out the perforated vinyl on one of the Valley Flyer buses? I’m a regular VF passenger and resent not being able to see out of the bus due to these inane designs. I certainly don’t feel like the bus company has become “part of my community”, which was a stated objective from the rebrand in the first place.
Keep up the good work.