New teal look for Christchurch's buses

Christchurch’s bus fleet is changing colour.

Environment Canterbury (ECan), which is in charge of public transport in Christchurch, has unveiled a new teal coloured livery for all city buses other than the Orbiter.

The change in livery follows research showing general awareness of Christchurch’s public transport offering is at times unclear.

“Get more people using the bus – that’s the mission. We want to make it clearer that this is a single, reliable, connected network that will get you anywhere you need to go in greater Christchurch across the day,’’ says ECan Councillor Phil Clearwater.

“We found that the numerous brands of Christchurch’s buses were diluting the message of Metro’s connected network, and so we have worked with our bus operators, Go Bus, Red Bus and Ritchies, during the implementation of their new contracts to introduce a single look across all buses.

“The new operating contracts include replacement of around 100 buses, or half our fleet, over the next two years, so with this many buses being produced, this is the time to update the livery,” Cr Clearwater said.

The prototype vehicle unveiled today is a MAN A80 Euro 6, operated by Go Bus. It is one of 39 new ultra-low emission buses arriving over the next months to serve Christchurch bus users. All of them will be built by a local bus manufacturer in Rolleston.

These will be followed by 25 zero emission electric buses in 2021, and more new buses in 2022.