Tranzit Coachlines offers free bus to TSB Festival of Lights in New Plymouth

Tranzit's festival bus will take people to and from TSB Festival of Lights.

A vibrant, eye-catching TSB Festival of Lights bus will turn heads in Taranaki this summer.

Tranzit Coachlines has signed up for another year to support the New Plymouth District Council’s TSB Festival of Lights by offering a free bus service to help alleviate traffic congestion and ensure festival-goers get safely to and from the event in the CBD.

After the success of last year’s free service, offered in partnership with the council and Centre City, Tranzit Coachlines Taranaki manager Colin Shotter said the company is happy to support the popular event again this summer.

Thebus will be easy to spot thanks to its colourful livery with depictions of light artworks in this year’s festival, and music, flora and fauna found at Pukekura Park.

“Last year, our free bus service generated compliments like ‘we took the free bus from the city centre to the Festival of Lights on the weekend - very impressed. Nice clean bus and great driver would recommend’ so we are pleased to be supporting the festival again this summer and ensuring visitors to New Plymouth can get safely to and from the event.

“What’s even more exciting for festival-goers is they can travel in our beautiful festival bus complete with colourful artwork.”

Festival manager Lisa Ekdahl said the artwork was created by talented multi-disciplinary artist, Harris Keenan.

“As well as depicting the vibrancy of the festival on the bus, Keenan is a lighting artist whose work features in this year’s TSB Festival of Lights. We are excited to see people using this fun, free transport option to ease stress and congestion around Pukekura Park.”

The TSB Festival of Lights runs between December 21 and January 26.

The free bus will run every half hour to the main entrance to the festival. The bus will continuously loop between Bay E on Ariki St and Pukekura Park’s main entrance on Fillis St.

The first departure from Ariki St is at 7.30pm and the last departure from Fillis St is at 11pm. Centre City will provide free parking for the first two hours. More information can be found here.

Shotter said the TSB Festival of Lights is one of two significant events in New Plymouth over the summer that Tranzit, New Zealand’s largest family-owned transport and tourism business, is supporting. The other is providing transport for artists performing at Womad New Zealand scheduled to be held March 14-16.