NZ In Tranzit: New buses in Selwyn Star livery hit the road

Saturday, February 12, 2011

New buses in Selwyn Star livery hit the road

According to the Urban Development strategy Newsletter, December 2010 "Environment Canterbury and Leopard Coachlines moved 'heaven and earth' to ensure the new Selwyn Star services began in November, despite other unscheduled earth movements. The original plan had been to to roll out a fleet of brand new, locally built, Selwyn Star buses at the beginning of November. Instead the bus builder's factory at Rolleston was badly damaged by the Greendale-earthquake so delivery to thirty-two new bright yellow state of the art buses has been delayed until early next year" ....and are now appearing on the road.

This one spotted turning from Waterloo Road (the country-quaint fast track to Rolleston) and heading back onto the main road just before Rolleston itself.

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This blog is mostly about public transport and social infrastructure in Christchurch, and transit around New Zealand. Also tracked; transit developments in similar sized cities in Canada and Australia, kindred in demographic patterns, for added perspective and inspiration. NZ in Tranzit blog covers some of the new transit technology and discusses public transport concepts in general, as well. Because the blogster's day-job is in a high profile customer industry to preserve some degree of privacy he appears only as a rabbit in his profile, albeit using his real name.

Christchurch is a city of metropop c 400,000 in Te Wai Pounamu, the southern of the larger islands of NZ. Public transport is operated under the auspices of a regional council with bus operations (and those of one small cross harbour ferry) tendered out to private operators including one owned by the City Council, Redbus. We have a modern clean fleet of buses which offer fairly frequent services to all city areas. The city has been quick to adapt new technologies such as low-floor buses, smart-card (arguably the best in the world!), GPS and Real Time signage and interactive text, and online type information systems. Our busiest route is The Orbiter, a service that circulates around the middle suburbs, and the ring of shopping malls, high schools and the city University about 4-5km from the centre of town

Christchurch also has restored trams operating on a central city circuit. Note [May 2011] - Sadly, due to two huge earthquakes (that took 182 lives) and multiple aftershocks much of the central city of Christchurch will be closed to public access for up to a year to allow the demolition of 900 severely damaged buildings. This includes a great many heritage buildings that previously gave the central city its distinctive character and (such was the exceptional ferocity of the second earthquake in February) even some of the high rises, possibly including those shown in photo above. Tram operations are suspended for at least a year. Many other parts of the city have resumed active life for both residents and tourists..

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Saturday, February 12, 2011

New buses in Selwyn Star livery hit the road

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