She says...

Press, Volume CXVI, Issue 34129, 15 April 1976, Page 10

She says...

My comments on smokey buses a couple of weeks ago has brought a sharp response from the Transport Board, which says that the tone of my comments . . suggests that the board’s buses are ail ill-maintained, smokebelching monsters, which should be banned from the roads.”

I think that’s reading rather a lot into my remarks, but never mind that I still maintain that diesel smoke is unpleasant, and that too many Christchurch buses put out such smoke.

According to the board’s letter, the board’s maintenance standards are “recognised as being amongst the best in this country. That this opinion is held by others in the road transport industry, is evidenced by an article printed in the July, 1970, edition of ‘Transport News of New Zealand’, the national trade journal of the licensed road transport industry ...” Fair enough, even if the article is six years old.

Anyway, to condense it all, the letter says that any smokey engine is recognised as being in need of attention, although faults do occur. But immediately they do, the board says, the buses are taken off the road for repair. Finally, the letter says that diesel fumes are nowhere near as dangerous as petrol-engine fumes, as indeed I pointed out two weeks ago. But I

repeat my comment then: the fumes are still very nasty. Finally, the board also says that while many car drivers would undoubtedly agree with banning buses, the 60,000 daily users of the board’s services would not take kindly to having them moved ' from the Square. The board kindly attached to its letter a complete run-down on the antismoke measures it takes with its buses. I’m not a diesel engineer, so I can’t comment, save to say that one must judge by results, and also that it’s interesting to see that the board’s new buses are said to be particularly “clean” in the exhaust.

I’ve never seen objectionable smoke from any of the new buses, but I’m told the amount of smoke a diesel puts out can depend to some extent on the way it’s driven.

The details apart, it’s good to see that the board is so sensitive to the diesel smoke question. It sounds as if the right thing to do is report any smokey buses to the board promptly, so they can get them off the road and fix them

And I’d just like to repeat one paragraph of my piece of two weeks past: “Anyway, if some of the buses are bad for putting out clouds of smoke, they’v e got nothing on some of the trucks which ply city streets ...”