Stagecoach places £97 million order for new buses!

Stagecoach has announced a massive order of new buses for their operations which has cost them £97 million.

From the Stagecoach Press Release

• Around 480 new buses and coaches ordered, many equipped with wi-fi
• £1billion orders for more than 6,500 new vehicles placed over past 10 years
• Latest intake of vehicles all meet latest Euro 6 emissions standards
• New orders help Stagecoach deliver a fully accessible fleet
• Stagecoach Group today (11 April 2016) announced new vehicle orders worth £97million.

A new fleet of around 480 vehicles, many equipped with free wifi, will be introduced in the coming 2016-17 financial year as the company continues its policy of reinvesting profits in improving services for customers.

The latest announcement takes Stagecoach Group's total orders of new buses and coaches to more than £1billion since 2006/07, delivering more than 6,500 new vehicles for passengers.

This year’s orders mean around £82million of new buses and coaches will be introduced in Stagecoach's regional networks in England, Scotland and Wales. There is also a £10million order for new buses for London and around £4.5million will be spent on coaches for the Group’s megabus.com operations.

Most of the new vehicles are set to be built in the UK, helping to support hundreds of British manufacturing jobs and smaller businesses in the supply chain who produce key components from drivers' seats and toilets to wheelchair lifts and destination displays*. All of the new vehicles meet Euro 6 emissions standards.

All of the new vehicles will be fitted with CCTV while most will also have wi-fi installed, giving customers free internet access during their journeys.

The latest orders follow an annual competitive tendering process and the first of the new vehicles will be delivered from Spring 2016.

Highlights of the latest investment are almost 280 low-floor double-decker vehicles to go into service across the UK, ensuring that Stagecoach work has met its requirements under the UK Disability Discrimination Act deadline for double deck vehicles. The company previously met the DDA deadline for smaller vehicles.

There are also almost 100 single decker and midi vehicles and 14 coaches for UK Bus express service, as well as 13 new coaches for megabus.com and 36 minibuses for local regional companies.  Around 65 of the new buses will be used for Stagecoach Gold services.

In London, Stagecoach has placed a £10million order for more than 50 new vehicles.

Stagecoach has also made a multi-million pound investment in digital technology and recently launched a transformational new, fully mobile, UK Bus website which lets customers check live running times for their services and buy travel from their smartphone.

Along with the country's other major bus operators, Stagecoach has also invested heavily to complete the introduction of smart multi-operator bus ticketing in all nine of England's smart city regions with support from local transport authorities.

Britain’s five main bus operators – including Stagecoach – are also working together to produce a business case for the introduction of contactless technology on every bus in Britain. The business case is expected to be completed by late spring 2016 and the scheme, funded predominantly by the private sector, could see new EMV contactless technology installed on every one of the UK’s 32,000-plus buses outside London. It would offer cashless travel for those who want it and capped pay-as-you-go-fares in all urban areas.

Stagecoach was rated by customers as the best value major bus operator in the UK for the third consecutive year in the most recent Bus Passenger Satisfaction survey carried out by Transport Focus.

Stagecoach Group Chief Executive Martin Griffiths said: “Everything we do is about making travel even better for our customers. We are investing in state-of-the-art, cleaner, greener vehicles, digital technology and smart ticketing to raise the bar and deliver an even higher standard of service. These latest vehicle orders are an important part of our strategy to encourage even more people to take the bus.

“Local bus services are the backbone of the country’s transport networks. Stagecoach provides millions of people every day with a greener way to access work, health, education and leisure and we offer the best value bus fares in Britain.”

Details of the new orders are as follows:

UK REGIONAL OPERATIONS

278 ADL MMC E400 double-deckers

71 ADL MMC E200 single-deckers

13 ADL MMC E200 midibuses

11 Volvo  B11/R Plaxton Elite 6x2

2 Volvo B11/R Plaxton Elite 4x2

1 Volvo B11/R Plaxton Elite i

30 Mercedes Benz Sprinter City 45 minibuses

6 Optare Solo SR Slimline minibuses

MEGABUS.COM OPERATIONS

7 Volvo B11/R Plaxton Elite i

6 Van Hool Astromega double-deckers

LONDON OPERATIONS

37 ADL MMC E400 Hybrid double-deckers

3 ADL MMC E400 double-deckers

13 ADL MMC E200 single deckers

Yes, £10 million is being spent on 53 new buses for London, 37 of these will be diesel-electric hybrid's. It’s a shame that they didn't consider ordering the competing iconic Enviro400H City.

Why is the Stagecoach bus fleet mostly manufactured by Alexander Dennis (ADL)? I’ve found out that Stagecoach founders Brian Souter and his sister Ann Gloag hold 55% of the shares in Alexander Dennis which I believe is the reason Stagecoach gets good deals with them to provide new buses for their services.

I'd like to add that the commuters believe that TFL buys new buses. In a sense that's true as they negotiate with operators to order the new buses required as part of the new contracts. TFL directly orders and owns buses such as the New Routemaster bus and leases them to the operators; the operators have to pay £1 per New Routemaster bus per year as part of the contract.

TFL hold reports of their purchases and contracts on their website as part of the TFL transparency policy.

Here are the pages which includes the documents in PDF and CSV (Spreadsheet) format.

Expenditure over £250

Contracts greater than £5,000

Purchase orders over £5,000

These documents are worth looking at for those that are interested.

The New Routemaster design has evolved in to two bus types which are the Enviro400H City and the Volvo SRM. The Enviro400H City is purchased by CT Plus for their route 26 contract whilst RATP-Dev ordered 6 of the Volvo SRM’s for route 13 which will all appear later this year.

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Image attribution
By GeoffGlem - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=44757078