tested in January<\/a>, with a bus borrowed from Auckland.<\/p>\nIt is a much-needed investment for Wellington’s busiest route, Greater Wellington’s Transport Committee chair Thomas Nash said.<\/p>\n
Each bus can carry 112 passengers – about 65 percent more than a standard single-decker.<\/p>\n
“Route 2 buses provide about three million passenger trips annually, a number expected to double over the next 10 years,” Nash said.<\/p>\n
It is the alternative to double-decker buses, which cannot fit through Wellington’s oldest road tunnel – the Karori Tunnel.<\/p>\n
The route the articulated buses will drive on will later be expanded to the suburb of Seatoun – which also has a tunnel that a double-decker bus cannot fit through, but required high-capacity bus stops.<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for Metlink said Wellington City Council had only allowed the installation of high-capacity bus stops in Karori.<\/p>\n
“In the future, we hope to work with Wellington City Council on traffic resolutions to allow high-capacity bus stops on Route 2 between Courtenay Place and Miramar\/Seatoun.”<\/p>\n
The owner of the Instagram public transport fan account if**kinglovemetlink, who wished to remain anonymous, told RNZ the buses were much needed.<\/p>\n
“As a strong advocate for public transport, and public transport infrastructure, I think the addition of articulated buses to the Wellington bus fleet would aid greatly in the movement of people in Wellington.<\/p>\n
“The number 2 route is one of the busier routes in Wellington, and due to it being required to travel through a tunnel, [it is restricted] from being assigned double-decker, high-capacity buses. The addition of articulated buses to the fleet solves this problem.<\/p>\n
“Overall, I think these buses will serve Wellington greatly.”<\/p>\n
The buses are expected to enter service in early 2027.<\/p>\n
Sign up for Ng\u0101 Pitopito K\u014drero, a daily newsletter<\/a> curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Geely electric articulated vehicle of the type being procured, with Metlink livery digitally added. Photo: Supplied \/…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":45719,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[48,47,42,43,49,46,44,45,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-45718","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-audio","9":"tag-current-affairs","10":"tag-headlines","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-podcasts","13":"tag-public-radio","14":"tag-radio-new-zealand","15":"tag-rnz","16":"tag-top-news","17":"tag-top-stories","18":"tag-topnews","19":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45718","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45718"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45718\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45719"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}