‘Terrible’ fumes in Square

Press, 27 January 1988, Page 7

‘Terrible’ fumes in Square

The fumes in Cathedral Square were “terrible” when all the buses took off at once, said a Transport Board member, Mrs Carole Evans, yesterday.

The buses’ exhaust emissions were as bad as they had been for many years, said the general manager, Mr Max Taylor. “It is not good enough and I am far from happy with the situation,” he said.

The board had a programme to rectify the problems and the exhausts would be brought back to the high standards of the past, said Mr Taylor.

The board was discussing a report by the engineering manager on the feasibility and cost of fitting buses with vertical exhaust systems. The report said that the vertical exhausts would do nothing to improve the quality of the exhaust being discharged, and that evidence on its faster dispersal at the higher levels was inconclusive. The chairman of the board, Mr Patrick Neary, said diesel engines came in for a lot of criticism because the fumes were visible.

“In fact, diesel fumes have very little carbonmonoxide and no lead,” he said. “We should not think about the cosmetic effects alone.” The board decided that it was better to spend money on improved maintenance and higher quality specifications for the existing exhausts than to install vertical ones.

“Magic mushrooms” were much in evidence when the Tramways Union put its wage claims together, said the general manager of the Christchurch Transport Board, Mr Max Taylor. “In my 14 years with the board these are the most extreme set of claims I have sighted,” he said. “I believe it was put together in Auckland at a meeting where magic mushrooms were much in evidence.” The union was asking for a 34 per cent increase in pay, said Mr Taylor. The Christchurch Transport Board had allowed for a 7 per cent wage increase in its budget for the next financial year. The award negotiations are scheduled to begin in March.