Bus industry pledges greener new buses by 2025

The Confederation of Passenger Transport has pledged to work with the government to make every new bus an ultra-low or zero emission bus from 2025.

The new strategy Moving Forward Together includes commitments to reduce travel costs for job seekers and apprentices by 2021, introduce price-capped daily and weekly tickets across multiple operators by 2022 in urban areas and to work with government to develop innovative sustainable solutions to rural transport.

Alongside the industry’s commitments, the confederation is urging the government to introduce a national bus strategy to help deliver better bus services across England. This would include bus journey time targets for local transport authorities, speeding up millions of journeys to work, school and leisure and encouraging more people to get on the bus.

Graham Vidler, chief executive of the confederation, said: “Buses are already the cleanest form of road transport and have a crucial role to play in tackling environmental issues and helping to meet important targets on improving air quality and reducing carbon emissions. With the right support from government to make the transition the bus industry will buy only ultra-low or zero emission buses by 2025, reducing CO2 emissions by half a million tonnes a year.

“We can do even more to tackle climate change and improve air quality by getting people out of their cars and onto the bus. If everyone switched just one car journey a month to bus, there would be a billion fewer car journeys and a saving of two million tonnes of CO2 a year.

“Better bus services are the key to shifting travel habits and growing the significant economic contribution the industry makes. We know that congestion remains the biggest barrier to increasing passenger numbers in towns and cities and that many rural communities feel current bus services don’t meet their needs. We’ll continue to invest in better buses with better facilities and simpler ticketing. We need government to incentivise local authorities to cut congestion and work with us to examine new ways of delivering transport services that work for more isolated communities.”