News

• Go-Ahead bus companies have created home activity sheets for children to support parents
• Go South Coast launches online ‘bus school’ with English and art activities
• Buses continue to be at the heart of communities even though fewer services are running

• One-in-three applications for Go-Ahead’s 2020 bus management graduate scheme came from women
• Go-Ahead has set a target to increase female representation in its bus companies from 11% to 20% by 2025
• The company launched an industry-first “Women in Bus” network in 2019 
• Go-Ahead has a gender-balanced board with over 50% female representation 

• Carbon Disclosure Project gives Go-Ahead new, high score in global league table for progress on sustainability and environmental measures 
• Carbon emissions across the bus and train operator are down by 22 per cent per vehicle mile over the past two years.
• Go-Ahead also becomes the latest company awarded the London Stock Exchange’s new ‘Green Economy’ Accreditation.

• Go-Ahead’s provision of onboard WiFi has been certified for safety and family-friendly content
• The Wifi Friendly scheme was launched by David Cameron, in partnership with The UK Council for Child Internet Safety
• Free WiFi is available onboard Go-Ahead buses and trains across the country

• The Go-Ahead Group will expand apprentice recruitment by 20 per cent for 2020
•  Go-Ahead met its target of recruiting 1,000 apprentices in 2019
• The expansion is bucking the wider national trend of falling apprenticeship starts

• Over 1 million Tap On, Tap Off transactions completed – 70,000 per week and rising
• 34,400 passengers experienced savings as a result of fare caps
• Tap-on, tap-off contactless used to pay for 29.2% of on-bus payments
• Less than 10% of passengers on Brighton & Hove buses are now paying with cash

Our air filtering buses are set to hit the streets in six more regions across England. We are deploying an air filtering bus in Brighton, Manchester, Newcastle, Oxford, Plymouth and Crawley/Gatwick, as part of our commitment to run the greenest fleet of buses in the UK. They will enter into service in summer 2020 to demonstrate that buses are part of the solution to tackling poor air quality.

We initially trialed the air-filtering bus on a Bluestar bus in Southampton. Initial tests indicated that just one bus could remove 65g of pollutants from the air in 100 days – equivalent to the weight of a tennis ball. The single-decker bus has an air filtering system on the roof, which is made up of three fans that suck ultra-fine particles and dirt (known as PM10) as it travels on the streets.

In addition to rolling out the air filtering bus into six more regions, we will be introducing five more air-cleaning vehicles in Southampton in early February. This will cover the whole route in the city centre.

Health problems associated with outdoor air pollution are linked to 4.2 million premature deaths worldwide, and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs estimates that regular exposure to particulate air pollution can reduce life expectancy by six months on average.