Wheelchair bus ramp fails

A Wellington wheelchair user getting off a bus last month was sent crashing to the ground after the hinges on the bus ramp failed.

The incident resulted in Wellington bus operator NZ Bus telling drivers not to pick up people in wheelchairs until the faulty ramps, delivered on a shipment of 51 new electric buses, were fixed.

Chinese manufacturer CRRC is responsible for the cost of repairs, most of which have been done, with the rest expected by the end of the week. Only new single-decker NZ Bus electric buses are affected.

A memo to NZ Bus drivers, obtained by The Post, ordered them to check whether they were driving a bus with a new, fixed ramp.

‘‘If old type, then will not be able to be used until replaced so please advise passengers and apologise,’’ the memo says.

It comes amid a bus driver shortage and while the viability of the $7.4 billion Let’s Get Wellington Moving transport overhaul is being called into question.

The city is also dealing with infrastructure fails with broken pipes around the city, while the Wellington City Council is having to replace parts of 17,000 street lamps after a design fault led to some crashing to the ground.

Wheelchair user Alice Mander was disembarking a bus in Lambton Quay on May 23. The driver folded the ramp open but, as she used it, the hinges cracked and she crashed to the ground.

The heavy chair remained upright but the situation ‘‘could have been really bad’’, she said.

‘‘It was definitely a bit of a shock,’’ she said.

Regional council transport committee chairperson Thomas Nash said 51 single-decker electric buses which came to Wellington 18 months to two years ago had the fault. Of those, 37 had been fixed with parts arriving for the rest and a complete fix expected by the end of the week. The problem was discovered when one collapsed in May. As soon as it was discovered, drivers were told not to collect people such as wheelchair users who needed the ramp if the bus had the old-style ramp, Nash said.

‘‘It is unacceptable that wheelchair users can’t use our buses,’’ Nash said. The issue was down to a manufacturer’s fault and it was up to them – or the contractor who supplied the ramps – to fix them.

Metlink acting group manager Fiona Abbott said Metlink had apologised to Mander for the incident. Metlink was not aware of any other failed ramps. ‘‘An investigation by CRRC discovered a ramp design fault and CRRC are currently replacing ramps under warranty on 51 electric buses supplied to NZ Bus. No other buses in the Metlink fleet are affected.’’

NZ Bus spokesman Russell Turnbull said the problem was a ‘‘fault with a hinge’’ and the company had also apologised to Mander.

‘‘The issue meant we had 51 buses in Wellington with wheelchair ramps that were potentially unsafe to use.

‘‘Instead of cancelling services entirely due to the faulty ramp, we instead gave instructions to drivers not to use the ramps and to continue to run the buses. ‘‘

The buses were made by Chinese company CRRC, a company accused of using workers from the Uyghur minority, who were forced into labour as part of the Chinese Communist Party’s efforts to repress the ethnic group in the western region of Xinjiang.

The Australian Strategic Policy Institute named CRRC as one of 82 foreign and Chinese companies ‘‘potentially directly or indirectly benefiting from the use of Uyghur workers’’.