Charge Mt Eden cars too, say bus operators

Coach operators want to take tourists on a shortened route up crowded Mt Eden, and say any plan to charge them should be extended to cars.

The Bus and Coach Association, jolted by a call from Mayor Dick Hubbard to ban vehicles from the volcano known also as Maungawhau, says it accepts a need for some form of traffic management.

But any restrictions should apply equally to cars and coaches helping to get more than a million visitors to the summit each year.

Although it does not favour charges for carrying tourists up the mountain, the association suggests that fees of possibly $5 a coach and $2 a car "would cause casual or impulse visitors to think twice about their visit."

Friends of Maungawhau co-organiser Kit Howden said last night that he was pleased the operators seemed to be "coming around" to accepting a need for some controls on a heritage site of great importance which was under considerable stress.

His organisation was backing a proposal of Mr Hubbard for a "Rangitoto-style" tractor-train to shuttle visitors to the summit from a parking bay for coaches part-way up the mountain.

This would be at a proposed visitors' centre at what is now Langtons Heritage Restaurant, after its council lease expires next year, where the organisation also wants a full-time ranger appointed to protect and champion the mountain.

Bus and Coach Association executive director John Collyns said his members would have concerns about transferring passengers from their vehicles to a separate shuttle service up the mountain, because of risks of losing stragglers.

He believed the council should look at sending car passengers in a tractor-train shuttle round the long scenic way up the mountain, and allowing coaches to travel up and down the short route now confined to downhill traffic.