New Zealand - Bus
- NZR Bus Crash
-This smash from about 1967 is just out of Queenstown.
- The buses were empty apart from the driver, the road had been under mined, they were following each other in heavy rain.
- circa 1967
- Dave Howell Collection photo
#bus
#queenstown
NZR
- The first bus operation by NZR began on 1 October 1907, between Culverden on the Waiau Branch and Waiau Ferry in Canterbury.
- By the 1920s NZR was noticing a considerable downturn in rail passenger traffic on many lines due to increasing ownership of private cars, and from 1923 it began to coordinate rail passenger services with private bus services.
- In November 1926, NZR purchased a private bus firm operating between Hastings and Napier in the Hawke's Bay region. NZR then acquired various other bus services in Dunedin and the Hutt Valley, and by 1928 was operating 56 buses.
- In 1931 Parliament passed the Transport Licensing Act, which regulated local bus services to ensure that services would not compete with NZR. This further increased acquisitions by NZR of small bus companies.
- There was a certain amount of rivalry within NZR between NZRRS and the rail Traffic Branch and in many ways they competed with rather than complement each other.[2] For example, many cities had bus terminals some distance from railway stations and many NZRRS routes ran parallel to and at similar times to trains.
- By 1954 the bus routes covered 6,000 miles (9,700 km), but generally at higher fares than the railways.
(Reference: Wikipedia)
Image source: NZR Bus Crash.ca 1967
Entry in the 2009 Christchurch City Libraries Photo Hunt by Dave Howell.
NZR Bus Crash. by CityScape is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivatives 3.0 New Zealand License
http://ketechristchurch.peoplesnetworknz.info/site/images/show/31371-nzr-bus-crash#.X2pGwmgzbIW