Saturday, June 24, 2006
Stopped the folly and saved the trolleys.
It has just been announced by Greater Wellington Chairman Ian Buchanan that the purchase of the 60 new reburbished trolley buses is going ahead - in other words Wellington is keeping its trolleys!Over the last few years there have been many wrangles whether to keep the up-to-24-year-old trolley buses on the roads; who would pay and how much for a fleet upgrade; how much to pay for an urgent lines upgrade; the inequal funding ratios between diesels and trolleys leading to a Greater Wellington shortfall; and lastly commerce commision inquiries.
But in the end, simple common sense prevailed and our clean, green and quiet trolleys buses are here to stay for the foreseeable future and when Project West Wind comes on board, the buses will be powered by our region's famed asset - the wind. The 60 trolley buses on our roads save 600 000 litres of diesel! That's a lot of foreign exchange, street level exhaust fumes and greenhouses gases from insecure supply sources avoided!
So the public meeting this Sunday 25 June 3pm has been cancelled. However, we will be holding a meeting in the near future to discuss wider transport issues in the Wellington region, and will attempt to achieve a cross-party consensus on the necessary improvements to Wellington's transport future.
Thank you very much to all those who helped out on the campaign - signing petitions, holding stalls and writing letters to the editor. In the end, much like how the trolleys were saved in the early 1980s, it came down to public pressure on the decision makers to stop the folly, save our trolleys!
For more information see Greater Wellingtons press release
http://www.gw.govt.nz/story17535.cfm
Hopefully you won't be hearing much from me anymore on the trolley buses. Anyone (if they did), coming to this site would assume that I am a trolley bus nut and absolutley mad about them....I'm not. Yeah I'm fond of them and I think losing them would of been a real step backwards for Wellington. I've enjoyed campaigning on them over the last 6 weeks and am happy to get a victory on them. However saving the trolleys has been about keeping what we've already got and not about significantly or even, improving public transport in Wellington and NZ's climate situation.
So next on the list. I am goping to be working on the Northern corridor light rail propossal and would like to investigate the possibility of changing diesels for the better and running them on biofuels.
# posted by gareth @ 4:56 PM 
