Two Tauranga men are on a mission to make bus travel more attractive while reducing carbon emissions.

Architect Mark Wassung and Kiwi Bus Builders managing director Richard Drummond have been working together for four years on 23-seater electric bus prototypes that they hope will be trialled in Tauranga.

Wassung told Local Democracy Reporting he was driven to take up the project after using a lot of the buses and bus routes in the city and speaking to drivers.

'It's come out of seeing what's out there and looking at how to do things smarter and differently,” he says.

'I think there's a place for a smaller bus.”

The fully electric buses could be built at Drummond's factory in Tauriko and would be smaller and lighter than the handful of electric buses the Bay of Plenty Regional Council currently has in its fleet.

Drummond says infrastructure would also be required to ensure the network was as efficient as possible and in service charging would reduce the size of the batteries required.

His company is currently building 31 electric buses for Wellington that only need a 120-kilowatt battery because of in-service charging.

'With an eight-minute charge they can run 20 hours a day,” he says.

Other electric buses require 400 kilowatt batteries.

Drummond says the buses would cost between $600,000 and $700,000 each so it has been difficult to get funding for a trial.

Members of the joint transport committee formed by the regional council and Tauranga City Council, have shown interest in the pair's ideas during their presentations, which is 'heartening” says Drummond.

'Our drive was to try and create vehicles that were more useful, more usable and people and would prefer to travel on them, which is basically the opposite of where we are now,” he says.

A render of the 23-seater electric buses. Photo: Design Engine Architects.

Both Drummond and Wassung agree the current bus system is underutilised and large buses often drive around with very few passengers on board.

Wassung says: 'It's no good having all these big yellow buses running around that are empty or there's two or three people in there.”

'They're not really consistently accessible [either], so some of them have platforms, some of them drop down. I'm suggesting here that the accessibility is really important.”

The 23-seater electric buses would have a different layout than current buses enabling better accessibility.

'What I brought to it as an architect is to treat it like the floor plan of a building,” says Wassung.

'You could modernise it and change it, so I suggested a more open floor plan to allow for mobility scooters, prams, surfboards, et cetera, so you have a less standardised approach than having bucket seats.”

Wassung has suggested colour coding the buses and routes to simplify the network and increase usability.

'All of our buses are yellow and one of the ideas that I'm suggesting is that we could colour code our loops or lines.

'So, for seniors and for kids, it'd be easier. It'd be easy to see all the red buses are Cameron Road, for example, and all the bus shelters and the buses would be red.”

The prefabricated bus shelters could be customised to include a toilet or coffee shop. Photo: Design Engine Architects.

Wassung also designed prefabricated solar bus shelters that could be customised to have a toilet, coffee shop or bike hub.

The multi-modal hubs would be built from aluminium and high impact acrylic and have proximity lighting and heaters.

He would like to see the shelters trialled at the same time as the bus prototypes.

'We're just trying to make the whole system more user friendly.”

Both Wassung and Drummond have put their own time and money into designing these projects.

The pair have also worked with Max Lewis, who provided the perspective of seniors' needs for the bus network.

'Three concerned residents that have different backgrounds have come together to put something to together that's innovative … fast, frequent, reliable, nimble, and accessible” says Wassung.

Public Interest Journalism funded through NZ On Air.