07 November 2008

Dear Colleagues

Some more investment news – between September and December we are bringing in 90 new vehicles to our Ulsterbus fleet.  This is an investment of over £14 million.
 
We should never forget our main competition is the car and so it is very important we offer a comparable product in terms of comfort, quality and accessibility to continue to get more people to make the choice to travel with us.  These new buses do just that and are another step forward in keeping our bus fleet ‘youthful’ and hitting our average fleet age targets from the Regional Transportation Strategy.
 
It is worth mentioning the work that goes into buying fleets of buses (and trains and delivering all other investment programmes we have).  You will all know how much time you can spend buying a new car or kitchen or even a PC for your own family or house – so you can imagine the time and expertise it takes to get our big investment and procurement decisions right.  Our procurement and technical people are among the best in the business.
 
Of course, when buying new fleet, safety is taken ‘as standard’ but we continue to work hard to keep school transport safe and comfortable.  One initiative that gets great reviews and wins awards is our school safety bus.  To continue the good work we recently launched a new and improved vehicle.

The bus has been revamped and fitted out with more special features as it starts another tour of schools and communities all across Northern Ireland. These improvements will help our School Safety Officers to engage even more effectively with pupils and get the message out about safe behaviour on or near buses.  Amazingly 150,000 young people have enjoyed a visit from the safety bus in the past six years; over 25,000 will climb onboard during this academic year during visits to 350 schools.

Lastly, you will be interested to know the ‘Metro Friday’ campaign ended last week. Feedback from companies participating in the Metro Friday ‘corporate challenge’ has been positive and initial results show the campaign was a success with passenger journeys rising by 5% after 7pm on Friday evenings. 
 
It’s all about innovation and investment!

Catherine Mason,

Group Chief Executive