As Jorma Halonen steps down from the Optare Board of Directors, Ashok Leyland Ltd CFO, Gopal Mahadevan, has been appointed to the Board as Non-Executive Director with immediate effect. Gopal is a Chartered Accountant and a Company Secretary with 25 years’ experience in finance function across a variety of industries. He started his career with […]
Buses operating in Wiltshire and the Chilterns are set to have cleaner exhaust fumes following DfT funding. Wiltshire Council is to receive £361,000 to upgrade 19 existing buses with technology that will cut toxic pollutants, while Chiltern District Council will get £150,000 for similar work on ten buses. This builds on the £85,000 already used […]
Operators represented by CPT Cymru have warned against the Welsh Government’s plans to cut £24m of its funding for senior citizens’ concessionary bus travel. If this proposal goes ahead, it will lead to ‘major service cuts and job losses’, according to the operators. The Welsh Government has confirmed a three year funding package of £189m […]
I was talking to Derek Brumpton of Irizar UK recently. His family used to be coach operators and he told me how, in the early 1980s, his father had said to the salesman delivering his new Plaxton bodied Bedford, that it would be his last new coach because you couldn’t make money with coaches costing […]
MD of Bakers Coaches of Biddulph, Stoke on Trent, Phil Baker, has retired after nearly four decades at the forefront of the business. The company was founded by Phil’s father, James Baker, in 1936 and from humble beginnings as a garage and chauffer business it has progressed under Phil’s stewardship into what has been described […]
Moving on, those involved in the project are seeking to identify what other benefits and opportunities can be derived from the use of smart technology and are working on a number of European funding bids to help develop both the products available and the level of interoperability between systems. Last week Leicester City Council, with […]
Since Devolution the Scottish Government has invested £9bn in transport investment. Currently, Westminster restricts the capital funding it makes available to Scotland and its ability to borrow money independently. The Scottish Government believe that under Independence they would have the ability to raise capital more easily and far more cheaply than is possible under the […]
Later Phil explained that the whole Stagecoach North East team wants to be at the forefront of bringing on new technology and are convinced that the gas bus fleet will deliver lower running costs as well as the environmental benefits of cleaner engines without the complexity of hybrids. The initial phase of the Sunderland project […]