There's a pattern involving personalities with a lot of these closures,
especially in Australasia. None of the Tallinn type of independent
professional analysis, just a politician or two and a bureaucrat with a bee
in their bonnet, or more likely softened up by a sales pitch and a quiet
handshake with a manufacturer or some other vested interest. Clem Jones and
the Brisbane tramways, Joe Cahill and the Sydney tramways. Why were
excellent trolleybus systems in Australian cities closed, especially Hobart
with its hydro power supply. Add Wellington to the list with its renewable
geothermal power. These closures didn't meet any criteria - environmental,
economic, effectiveness as passenger transport or anything. I noticed
comments in one of those videos that pointed to overhead systems in Europe
still being good at 50 years and buses at over 30 years. So Wellington has
chucked the lot at less than half life. All they've achieved is to add
themselves to the list of cities famous for notching up big public
transport fails.

Tony P

On Friday 5 April 2024 at 10:21:09 UTC+11 David McLoughlin wrote:

> Two major matters caused the demise of Wellington’s trolley buses:

>

> • A change at the top of the Greater Wellington Regional Council

> transport department, where the pro-trolley manager departed and was

> replaced with a duo of anti-trolley managers supported by the GWRC chair

> and the transport committee chair (who was himself a former Wellington bus

> driver who hated trolleys).

>

> • The absence of any champion for the trolleys in the public realm

> including in the media. At two previous occasions where the trolleys were

> threatened, I worked as a daily newspaper reporter who was able to promote

> the benefits of the trolleys and help to sway political opinion; so well

> in the second occasion that I was personally invited to the signing in 2007

> of the contract for the fleet of Designline trolleys that replaced the

> Volvo trolleys bought in 1979 at the time of my first attempt at

> campaigning. This final time, the contraction (and slow death) of the media

> had forced me into other work, where I remain.

>

> It's simply not true that the overhead wires were run down. After the

> Designline contract was signed, a separate contract was signed between the

> regional council and the city council agency that owned the overhead

> network (WCCL) for a major upgrade of the network over multiple years.

> From 2009 to 2016, millions of dollars of ratepayers’ money were spent each

> year replacing the older OB wires that predominated along suburban roads

> with the latest K&M equipment. The overhead gang was sent to Switzerland at

> the start of this process for training in erecting K&M equipment. The

> overhead along most sections of all the routes was replaced as a result,

> including the entire length of the long and busy Karori Park and Island Bay

> routes and most of the Seatoun, Miramar, Lyall Bay and Kingston routes.

> Even the short Aro Street route received lengths of K&M overhead. The

> upgrading included replacing old-style coast-through section isolators with

> power-through isolators, making driving the trolleys that much easier.

>

> This replacement of the suburban overhead network complemented the

> inner-city network which had been similarly upgraded after the Volvos

> arrived in the 1980s.

>

> Having this core and quite extensive network of modern and upgraded

> overhead wires should have allowed GWRC to promote the use of

> battery-trolleys on routes beyond the overhead wires, as was already

> becoming popular in various European cities at the time GWRC decided in

> 2014 to close the trolleys on the day in 2017 that the 10-year operating

> contract with NZ Bus to run them ended. But GWRC had no interest in this

> despite the Designline trolleys already being equipped with batteries that

> allowed off-wire running up to 4km or so, a feature that was often deployed

> to get around road closures and other problems. Instead, GWRC allowed NZ

> Bus to replace the trolleys with second-hand diesels brought in from

> Auckland, then from 2018 it ordered service providers (chiefly NZ Bus and

> Tranzit at the time) to spend millions on heavy, expensive full-battery

> buses and the charging equipment they needed, when cheaper and quite

> practical battery-trolleys like the BOBs in Solingen and the latest Hess

> models in Salzburg (both of which I have visited in the past year) could

> have been bought and charged while running under the existing wires. Both

> Solingen and Salzburg are using these trolleys to replace route-by-route

> their diesel bus routes because the battery-trolley buses are cheaper and

> more efficient than purely battery buses.

>

> I was so shocked that a modern, much-upgraded trolleybus system as

> Wellington;s could be destroyed on a management/political whim after more

> than $100 million of public money had just been spent on it that I gave up.

> I just don’t give a damn about Wellington any more. The city is falling to

> pieces. As well as trashing what was the country’s best transport network

> (of which the trolleys were just one key part), the city’s leaders have

> neglected other infrastructure to such an extent that the roads are falling

> apart and the city’s water supply loses 45pc of its piped supplies from

> more than 4000 (and growing) leaks. Shops and offices are closed and

> boarded up all over the city. The pedestrian count is well down, not just

> because people want to avoid the slippery footpaths with their pools of

> leaked water and slime. Businesses have voted to move out. I’ve moved out

> myself to a more enlightened outer municipality where the roads get fixed

> and the pipes don’t leak. Given that one of the biggest opponents of public

> transport – trains as well as trolley buses – is now on the Wellington City

> Council and supposed gunzels have been prominent bad-mouthing Wellington’s

> trolleys, including here, I can no longer bring myself even to care.

>

>

>

> On Friday, April 5, 2024 at 11:03:20 AM UTC+13 TP wrote:

>

> A modern battery trolleybus service in operation - a video coverage of

> operations on the first of Prague's new trolleybus services, 58, between

> the major tram and metro interchange at Palmovka, near the city centre, and

> the rural village of Miškovice on the outskirts of Prague.

>

> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjAk-usd62k

>

>