Thursday 9th May 2024

We had a very interesting chat today with Paul Mascors and James Stuart from Transport Canberra. Paul is the one in charge of all the fleet, and it’s huge!

No-one had ever thought much about what lies behind that big blue bus as trundles along the road; but there are hundred of people and zillions of dollars involved in purchasing, maintaining, running and planning for the future.

Naturally the question of electric busses vam up and its not as straight forward a proposition as an electric car. A bus, to be able to run all day and half the night, needs a huge number of batteries, which are ultra expensive, large, heavy and take a considerable length of time to charge. They also have a finite financially viable life of seven years. TC have had to have special new high-voltage feeds put in from the electricity sub-stations to the depots just to accolade the 106 buses they have now. One interesting fact was that if they covered the entire depot with solar panels, they would have enough power to charge three buses – and of course the bus would have to be in the shed during the day, not out on the road! So that’s a non-starter.

Unlike all other business, the boss doesn’t get a car to drive around in, they have to take the bus, and in this case they brought one of the new electric ones to the shed for a bit of show-and-tell.

A very entertaining session and everyone appreciated them taking the time to come and chat. So thanks to all for coming.

Report & image : Brian Black