I’m sure you know that the Wel­ling­tonista is a big fan of the trol­ley buses, and thinks that every­one who bitches about the wires over­head being an eye­sore is an idi­ot. You prob­ably think that it’s because we’re dirty leftie greenies that we’re fond of the wires, but the truth is, we like them because it’s hil­ari­ous when they go down.

Like this morn­ing, watch­ing a trol­ley-bus hav­ing to get shunted by anoth­er bus out of a major Hataitai inter­sec­tion. And get­ting to ride on the oth­er side of Cour­tenay Place around marooned buses. And see­ing Wil­lis St totally blocked up with the corpses of trol­ley buses left life­less. Actu­ally it was lovely to see how friendly all the traffic was, and how quickly police and oth­er people in shiny coats were there to dir­ect traffic and keep things run­ning. Some­times Wel­ling­ton is a sur­pris­ingly well-oiled machine. The offi­cial word after the jump:

A fur­ther update, the power loss – the lack of power is ser­i­ous, a power cable has been dug up by a con­tract­or near Wake­field Street. Siemens and Stage­coach are work­ing to restore power to trol­ley buses as soon as pos­sible.

At the moment trol­ley buses are at a stand­still in Wil­lis St, Mer­cer St, Wake­field St, Man­ners, Cuba, Cour­tenay Place and right out to the bus tun­nel. Extens­ive delays are being exper­i­enced in the cbd.

Motor­ists should avoid the cbd until fur­ther notice.