Andrew Wickham, Managing Director at Go South Coast Ltd (Morebus), explains why Buses are a great, sustainable choice for travel, post lockdown.

Morebus are proud to be partnering with BCP and Dorset Councils on the TCF programme. We are working on plans for new bus lanes, bus gates and other bus friendly infrastructure - as well as giving buses priority at traffic signals to rapidly improve journey times into Poole and Bournemouth town centres. 

We are committed to helping improve the quality of air we breathe in the conurbation, and we have been working on this over recent years, including investing in a new fleet of greener vehicles that sport the very latest Euro 6 low emissions engines. A Euro 6 diesel car emits on average 10 times more NOx per km than a Euro 6 diesel bus.

One full double decker bus has the potential to replace 75 journeys taken by car. Buses help to reduce congestion and make our towns cleaner places to live and work. 

And there are potential health benefits too. Beyond the bus journey itself, a relatively overlooked aspect of public transport commuting is the ‘first and last miles’ - that is the four daily journeys that people make to-and-from their homes and workplaces. This provides the ideal opportunity to integrate a good amount of physical activity into their daily lives. Our website makes planning a journey really simple and will even show you how many steps you need to take to walk to a bus stop, which bus route you need and how long the journey will be on the bus, followed by the amount of steps you will need to take to get to your final destination. It will even calculate how much Co2 you can save compared to driving.

With the government preparing to further lift restrictions next month, we want to reassure residents that safe and sustainable bus travel is ready-and waiting with morebus. For those who haven’t been on a bus for a while, we wanted to reassure you that safety is our number one priority.

• Wearing a face covering on-board is compulsory unless you are exempt on medical grounds by law.
• Cleaning – we have extensive cleaning regimes that maintain high levels of hygiene for customers to protect the health and well-being of our customers and employees. We are ensuring a greater focus on high-touch areas and increasing activity where necessary.
• Seating - we have blocked off certain seats on-board to maintain social distancing and are requesting customers sit in the window seats. To ensure social distancing, we will only accept a certain number of passengers on each bus and some buses may reach a temporary capacity meaning they cannot accept any more customers. 
• Buying tickets - we are asking customers to pay using contactless, to minimise cash handling - however, cash payments are still accepted for those who cannot pay by any other means, due to less change being available we ask that you have the correct fare if you can.
• Hand sanitiser dispensers - are provided on all our buses for customers to use. We encourage you to use the hand sanitiser upon boarding and exiting the bus.
• Our drivers - we have also installed safety screens in our driving cabs to create a protective layer between our drivers and customers, for your safety and theirs please do not touch these screens.

Bus travel has changed beyond recognition over recent years, and those who haven’t travelled with us recently will be amazed at the enhancements we’ve made. Our new buses have more comfortable seating, USB charging points for smartphone and tablet users, next stop audio announcements to improve accessibility issues, accept mobile phone payments, as well as contactless with tap on and tap off coming this summer.

We look forward to welcoming many people back on-board for their commute to work or a traditional day out by bus.