The past few weeks have seen the first major upgrading of Wellington’s trolley bus overhead wire system in years.
Today saw the completion of the total replacement of the route 3 wires in Bowen St from Tinakori Rd to just below the Terrace. Trolleys will return to the 3 (Karori Park to Lyall Bay) from Tuesday after having been diseaselised for several weeks while new wires were strung from new poles in Bowen St.
Similarly, the wires past the hospital in Riddiford St used by routes 1, 3, 10 and 11 have also been replaced with new ones as part of the road widening there. And new wires have been strung through the Hataitai bus tunnel.
There had been no major upgrading of the trolley bus wires since the 1990s, so these are welcome, but long overdue, developments. Much more is needed before the trolleys will be capable of running at anything like their potential, as they need overhead wires in good condition to be able to travel smoothly without constant risk of losing their poles.
Weekend trolley bus operations — diseaselised since 2000 — were to have resumed from next Sunday, now that more than 30 of the new low-floor Designline trolleys are in service. But it seems this also long-overdue event will not happen next Sunday because a cycle race will close Lambton Quay and buses will need to be diverted. The wires that used to allow inbound trolleys to bypass Lambton Quay to get to the rail via the waterfront were removed several years ago, shamefully, so diesels will need to be used for the diversion.
The following weekend, I’m told, the Sevens will be the excuse not to operate trolley buses, while I’m also told that the forthcoming Cuba St carnival will also be used as an excuse to keep those diesels running while we ratepayers and taxpayers keep on paying $9 million a year for clean, quiet trolley buses that barely see the light of day on weekdays, let alone in the evenings and never at weekends, despite the contract between Go Wellington and Greater Wellington Regional Council that legally requires them to be so used.
3 Comments
January 23, 2009 at 12:04 pm
You seem to be suggesting that they could be using them more during weekdays…? What’s the reasoning that they aren’t?
Also, you know if they’ve ever considered replacing the use of diesel with CNG or similar? Something cleaner and quieter so I don’t have to inhale noxious fumes as a pedestrian and cyclist in the city.
January 23, 2009 at 1:58 pm
You seem to be suggesting that they could be using them more during weekdays…? What’s the reasoning that they aren’t?
Drivers in particular but also the management find the trolleys a pain, so if there are two vehicles available — a trolley or a diesel — management lets drivers choose which type to take. Most drivers take a diesel as they are easier to drive for the inexperienced drivers this company has so many of.
Outside the morning peak hour, the company has enough diesel buses spare to cover the trolley bus runs, which means once the morning peak is over, most trolley buses vanish from the roads, with sometimes a few more coming out in the afternoon peak if there is a shortage of diesels, but all trolleys still on the road after 6pm are quickly replaced by diesels. Last night there were three trolleys still on the road at 8pm but all were being driven back to Kilbirnie depot, while 20-year-old diesel buses of the SL200 and Coffin models were in use on trolley routes. Many drivers actually prefer these ancient diesels to the modern diesels, let alone the brand new trolleys.
A trolley is not hard to drive, but it is different to drive. Trolleys used to be the majority of Wellington buses — 119 out of 180. Now they are the minority, only 62 of them even when all the new ones are delivered. So, many drivers rarely get to drive them enough to get the experience with them needed to drive them properly.
However we ratepayers and taxpayers pay $9 million a year for these expensive buses to be operated, yet they sit in the depots most of the time while noisy, fume-belching diesels run their services.
The company gets paid to run trolleys even if they are not run, so it loses nothing if it runs diesels on the trolley routes, while it also gets paid a subsidy for diesel fuel prices for running diesel buses. The incentive is thus to maximise diesel bus use and run trolley buses only if a diesel bus is not available for the service.
This is a scandalous waste of public money — the biggest scandal is Greater Wellington’s complicity in it — and I am preparing a complaint to the Auditor General, to be lodged next Tuesday unless weekend and weekday evening services resume from this weekend and this coming Monday night.
The company is actually contractually and thus legally required to operate trolley buses on the wired routes seven days a week from first bus till last. That Greater Wellington does nothing to enforce this contract which it pays $9 million a year of our money for is a disgrace.
See this article where the Go Wellington manager said recently that if he had his way, the trolley buses would all be replaced with diesel ones:
http://poneke.wordpress.com/2008/11/03/bus-7/
January 24, 2009 at 1:01 am
Regarding the cycle race diversion: the new trolleys can run off-wire for a reasonable distance. Shouldn’t that get around the issue without having to use diesels?