Melbourne’s Colonial Tramcar Restaurant has been caught in a “bureaucratic deadlock” with Yarra Trams, which has seen the iconic tourist attraction suspended from operating.

The fleet of popular rolling restaurants failed safety tests due to the questionable integrity of the wooden structural elements of the trams should a collision occur. However, the CEO of the Colonial Tramcar Restaurant took to social media over the weekend to disagree with the finding.  

“We reject suggestions from Yarra Trams that our iconic rolling restaurants are not safe,” said Paul O’Brien in a statement posted on the attraction’s Facebook page. “Yarra Trams has inspected our trams weekly since 2010 and up until two weeks had given us the all clear to run. How can we go from safe one week to unsafe the next? It is perplexing to say the least.”

The company have been told they need to upgrade their trams (“and we are willing to invest the millions of dollars required to do so,” said O’Brien), but the kicker is that the Bendigo-based workshop can’t schedule the trams into their W8 program until 2020.

Yes, that’s right. The trams can’t be upgraded for another two years.

Understandably, the company (and the public) are dissatisfied with this option. The announcement on Colonial Tramcar Restaurant Facebook page prompted nearly 600 comments, with many expressing their dismay that the popular attraction has been grounded. Those with dining reservations have been offered a refund, or the opportunity to dine in a stationary car, but let’s face it; it’s nowhere near the same as eating fine food while trundling through the bustling streets of Melbourne in an iconic mobile restaurant.

Colonial Tramcar Restaurant is calling on Transport Minister Jacinta Allan to “urgently intervene and set a deadline which will actually be possible to meet so we can convert our trams to the department’s new standards and save the jobs of more than 60 Victorians and an iconic Melbourne tourism attraction.”