Double-decker bus plan criticised by group

Press, 15 September 1988, Page 12

Double-decker bus plan criticised by group

By

TOM METCALFE

A plan to run sightseeing tours with a doubledecker bus shows the Christchurch Transport Board has “lost its way and forgotten its mission in business,” according to the Mount Cook Group. The group, which runs bus sightseeing services in Christchurch as the Gray Line, has written to the Transport Board and the Canterbury United Council protesting that a board venture into tourist transport is being subsidised by taxes and rates. The board plans to buy a double-decker bus to be used on its city and suburbs tour and as an inner-city shuttle, linking the Arts Centre, Town Hall, Hagley Park, parking buildings, main hotels and central-city retail and commercial areas. The Mount Cook Group’s marketing manager, Mr Peter Clark, said in a letter to the Trans-

port Board that the bus was to run a scheduled timetable round inner-city streets in order to qualify for Urban Transport Council grants and subsidies. Proposals for the board to widen its activities into dedicated tourist transport were ill-advised and speculative, he said. “To position the most recent adventure in a way that attracts publicly funded grants and subsidies to prop it up is a serious misuse of those funds,” he said. Mr Clark also wrote to the Canterbury United Council, which has contributed $25,000 to the running costs of the service for the first six months, asking why local body and Government taxes were being “diverted into propping up the Christchurch Transport Board’s adventures into an oversupplied transport market.” jje asked if the Mount

Cook Group, which also ran sightseeing tours in and around Christchurch, would receive $25,000 from the United Council towards the cost of running its buses. "The board has lost its way and forgotten its mission in business,” Mr Clark said. “We urge you to stop these developments in their tracks now.”