Electric bus service — not trams

It’s time Auckland copied something Wellington is doing — introducing fully electric buses. The proposal to spend between $2 billion and $3.4b (who really knows? Auckland Transport doesn’t) on a tram system for parts of Auckland is really silly. Ripping up good roads to install rail tracks is going to cause massive disruption over a long period and we’ll end up with a system that was out of date 60 years ago. Somebody breaks down or has an accident on the tracks and the trams ain’t goin’ nowhere. Just like the motorways almost daily.

The answer is a fleet of new all-electric buses running every 10-15 minutes throughout the day covering the proposed tram route. They just need a five minute battery top up from overhead chargers every 50km or so, maybe at their turn-around points. Each bus costs about $1m and they can drive around incidents and accidents so, voila — no delays.

The total cost of using 100 of these vehicles would be less than half a billion dollars, including the overhead charging stations, depots, training facilities, dedicated bus lanes and expensive corporate offices. They could be assembled in New Zealand and the service could be up and running inside a year. No dirty carbon emissions, very little noise, good employment, proven technology. Please don’t tell me a group of consultants has ruled this option out due to it not costing enough.

Larry Tompkins, Gulf Harbour.