Catch the Bus Week

Transdev are persuading car drivers to leave their cars at home during this year’s national Catch the Bus Week, which runs from 28th April to 4th May.

The campaign aims to promote the benefits of bus travel and encourage people who don’t normally take the bus to try making the switch from using the car.

Richard Jackson, Marketing Director of Transdev is keen people look again at all the benefits of bus travel: “We’re working incredibly hard to make every day bus travel more attractive than taking the car, many of our buses now have Wi-Fi on board and fabulously comfortable leather seating. Technologically, we have developed online ticket buying and more recently we launched our Lancashire Bus App across all our services, which allows customers to buy e-tickets on their smartphone, which they show to the driver whenever they want to travel. We hope car drivers will consider leaving the car at home during this week”.

Catch The Bus Week aims to promote the five big benefits of using the bus:

Saving – The increasing costs of fuel, road tax, insurance and repair bills has resulted in an average cost to UK motorists of £3,453 to run their cars which equates to 27p every mile*. A return trip to Manchester from Burnley or Blackburn would therefore cost the motorist £13.50 and that’s without parking charges, whereas catching the Witch Way or Lancashire Way for the same trip would only cost £9.00 return.
Health & wellbeing – Bus travel can be a far less stressful way to travel allowing passengers to catch up on their emails or social media thanks to onboard Wi-Fi or just catching up on a good book. Taking the bus can also help achieve the Governments recommended 30 minutes of daily exercise.
Economic – Bus travel supports local communities by bringing people together and keeps money within the local community. Bus passengers nationally contribute £64bn to the UK economy. The combined retail and leisure spend of bus users is £27.2bn**.
Environmental – It’s greener to get around by bus. Buses cut carbon emissions and traffic congestion reducing the carbon footprint from transport and improving air quality. If every car user switched to the bus for just one journey per month, the UK would save 2 million tonnes of CO2^.

Changing buses – the face of bus travel is being revolutionised by developments like:

On-board Wi-Fi allowing passengers to stay online whilst they travel
Luxury leather seating
Online ticket sales
Comprehensive, “next bus” information available via smartphone.
Paperless, e-tickets via the Lancashire Bus App.