Tranzit to build 97 purpose buses for the Hutt Valley

Tuesday, 1 August 2017

Tranzit managing director Paul Snelgrove is predicting the Hutt Valley would soon see electric buses.

It is 'only a matter of time' before the Hutt Valley gets electric buses.

That is the prediction Tranzit managing director Paul Snelgrove whose firm recently won the contract to run 60 per cent of the bus fleet across the Wellington region.

The technology needed to run electric buses was improving rapidly and it would soon be feasible to run them in the Hutt Valley, he said.

In the meantime, Snelgrove was promising Upper and Lower Hutt bus users would get a much better deal when it takes over the contract in the middle of next year.

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Snelgrove said the Masterton based family firm was committed to improving service.

The contract with the Greater Wellington Regional Council was a large one and Tranzit had already bought land in Upper and Lower Hutt for depots.

Since it was awarded the contract there had been a lot of publicity over wages.

Tranzit paid drivers a flat rate of up to $22 an hour which, for most drivers in the Hutt Valley, would be an increase.

In Wellington some members of the Tramways Union would be worse off as they would lose penal rates for working on a Sunday.

Tranzit is having 97 new buses built in three different sizes for the Hutt Valley.

Having small and medium-sized buses that could cope with hilly and windy roads in the Hutt was central to improving service, he said.

'I think that is pretty exciting for Upper and Lower Hutt because there will be a brand new fleet.'

Tranzit would take over all Hutt Valley services except the Eastbourne buses and the Airport Flyer.

Overall it was building 234 Euro 6 buses, which he said were state of the art and met the highest emission standards.

Tranzit had always been a family firm. It was started by his grandfather, Albert James Snelgrove in 1924 and is still based in the Wairarapa.

It had always had an interest in running the Hutt Valley buses and was delighted to have won the contract.

He would not say how much the contract, which runs for nine years, was worth but said it was obviously a lot of money.

'The best I can say is we have 234 buses and the average bus is more than $410,000 so it is a serious amount of money and the Hutt Valley will also get new depots.'

As well as electric buses, he was keen to see a single ticketing system so that someone catching a bus in Upper Hutt, could integrate with all services, including trains.