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.