Trolley-buses are on their way back—in Christchurch too?

Press, 11 April 1978, Page 17

Trolley-buses are on their way back—in Christchurch too?

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BOB McCORMICK

Electric trolley buses coming back to Christchurch? Don’t discount the possibility. Instead, examine the . Christchurch Transport Board’s recent move in relation to a dramatic overseas transport comeback.

An advertisement in “The Press” on March 31 offering 16 of the city’s diesel buses for sale prompted an interview “with a difference” with Mr M. G. Taylor, the board’s general manager. We had to let 10 years slip by in a hurry because the only time he had available was a brief lunch break between two important meetings. In between eating sandwiches at bis desk it took only seconds for the man destined to guide the city’s passenger transport system over the years ahead to warm up to the subject of buses for Christchurch in 1988.

Mr Taylor took time out to reveal the appropriate date of the interview because Friday, March 31, 1978, ended a four-year replacement contract commitment with the phasingin of 128 new buses into the city’s fleet of 178 vehicles.

Now, the board has its sights set on the completion of its next major replacement programme, about 1988, with 1983 the deadline year for a decision on the type of bus sytem to carry the city through ta the year 2000. City passenger trasnport is becoming a more difficult subject than ever to discuss these days without the complication of a weight of overseas evidence indicating that trol-ley-buses are coming back in many parts of the world.

Christchurch dispensed with its last trolley-bus in November, 1956, after 20 years of service in con-

junction with the city’s tramway system. In the early 1930 s it was a New Zealand leader in the manufacture of the vehicles. Diesel buses took over — as they did in many other countries — but the present trend is back to trolley-buses as the answer to rising fuel costs, noise, fumes, and the congestions caused by the diesel or internal combustion systems. Mr Taylor has seen the revival in Switzerland, the major moves being made in Manchester, England, and in Other parts of the world. His counterpart at Wellington, Mr Kevin Crompton, is at present in Switzerland studying the same matter.

Trolley-buses now provide the main city passenger service in Germany; in Amsterdam, 100 new buses have taken over city services; and 350 of the first new electric trolleybuses to be built in North America for more than 20 years have been delivered to San Francisco. Russia was, at one time, the only country building the new version of trolleybuses, but their manufacture is now a major industry in Canada where it was studied by Mr Taylor.

New Zealand was not alone in dropping trolleybuses. A study by the American Passenger Transport Authority revealed a drop from 7000 trolley-buses to 600 until there was a sudden halt a few years ago. And the signs are that most could be back by 1980. Mr Taylor readily admits to “being a fan for electric traction buses even if only for environmental reasons,” but capi’ tai outlay and running costs compared with the city’s present diesel system also come into the picture.

"But this is in the short-term . . . who knows what type of developments with battery storage will have taken place by 1983?” he asks. “In Manchester, they are already operating 11-metre long electric traction buses with AC motors instead of the old DC system.”

Should there be a revival of trolley-buses it is unlikely that the old twowire overhead system will come back. “It used to take a ton of copper per mile, or two tons per mile for the two overhead wires,” Mr Taylor says. Some overseas systems,

such as in Germany, have overhead wires in the outer suburbs where the poles from the buses connect during their normal running to give batteries a boost for inner-city running where there are no overhead wires.

Another ingenious layout provides charging points on various rou.es where complete sets of bus batteries can be changed in four minutes. This doubles the range of the vehicles. And it is in the development of storage batteries that Mr Taylor sees the strength of the evidence at present pointing to trolley-buses. A new

sodium and sulphur bat= tery has been developed in England. It represents a radical change from the fundamental lead batteries. Closer to home, Mr David Byers, a senior lecturer in the electrical engineering department at Canterbury University, has developed a battery-oper-ated car with a unique AC system. The car was recently demonstrated in Wellington. The batteries provide a range of 100 km with a top speed of 80kph. Any form of electric

traction requires a power source, reminds Mr Taylor, and there is n„t much point in having to import fuel oils to drive generators to provide power for electric traction sources.

“So here again we have to look at digging out more of our coal for power generation and we have a committee formed looking at all these factors.”

There are historical precedents for bringing back electric buses, they

were operating in london in 1890 and before the First World War. and Berlin also had them during the same period. The prototype of the new version trolley-bus in England is a single-deck streamlined shape with all equipment at the rear, carrying 30 seated passen« gers and 10 standing.

Christchurch, if it did opt for trolley-bus replacement. would have a large selection. The pride of the Moscow fleet is a 57ft articulated giant.