Opinion: Electric buses key part of transport strategy priorities

Penny Gaylor.

Weekly column by Kāpiti's Greater Wellington Regional Council representative Penny Gaylor.

Following a risk assessment because of the Parliament protest, last weekend Metlink removed all bus services from Lambton Interchange and put additional detours in place.

The decision was with everyone's health and wellbeing at the forefront of Metlink's plans.

Thanks is extended to all passengers for their patience during this time.

Last Thursday, as the protest on Parliament grounds continued, GWRC's transport committee met, and on our agenda was a check-in on the progress of our transport strategic priorities.

Certainly the agility needed by Metlink to conduct the aforementioned risk assessment and quickly implement alternative routes, highlights exactly the unknown kind of challenges that we face in achieving these strategic transport priorities.

Here are some notable highlights:

The Carbon Emissions Priorities are ahead of the target of 100 electric buses in our fleet by December 2023. Metlink expects to increase the number of electric buses by approximately 111 by the end of 2022/23: this includes the 98 electric buses, which have already been agreed to with NZ Bus and Tranzurban and the growth buses agreed to by council on December 10 , 2020.

NZ Bus has 37 electric buses in operation on the network. There are shipping delays caused by Covid-19, which has impacted the delivery of four buses which were scheduled to be in service by now, but a delivery of 10 electric buses is due in July. The final delivery date for the final 16 buses is to be confirmed. These are for growth so are dependent on the availability of drivers and the patronage demand recovery.

Tranzurban has 17 electric buses in operation on the network. The remaining 24 buses scheduled for Tranzurban will be introduced on a monthly basis through to early 2023. At this stage, we expect completion of this project (excluding growth buses) as originally planned. However, as the year progresses, we will be able to have more certainty about our ability to deliver on the project.

Our acceleration of the decarbonisation of the vehicle fleet to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2030 continues. Our goal to achieve a net zero carbon public transport vehicle fleet by 2030 was adopted by council as part of the Regional Public Transport Plan 2021 and the 2021-31 Long Term Plan.

We agreed to enable a new electric ferry to be brought in to service by East by West, and last December the new electric ferry was officially launched. This ferry is the first operating electric passenger ferry in the Southern Hemisphere. The replacement of a diesel ferry with an electric ferry will avoid an estimated 275,000kg of CO2 per year from diesel use.

While this is a small amount relative to Greater Wellington's total corporate carbon footprint, it is roughly the same as the decarbonisation benefit of eight electric buses.
Council is also supporting a trial by one of Metlink's operators (Tranzurban) to convert diesel buses to electric. We note that the project to convert buses from diesel to electric was not included in the recently announced National Land Transport Plan funding.

Funding of future conversion pathways is under discussion with Waka Kotahi.
The adopted Wellington Regional Public Transport Plan 2021 provides that all buses on core routes will be electric by 2030; operators will then be required to provide these services with electric vehicles.

This is great progress in our efforts to do our part for combating climate change, the environment, customer experience and public health.