Stagecoach announced plans on April 6 to invest £37.2 million in a new fleet of 170 electric buses for Stockport. It is the company’s largest ever electric bus order.
The order, for 150 double deck and 20 single deck vehicles, will be produced by Volvo/MCV and will start to enter service in summer 2024.
Stagecoach said in a statement that the buses will also be funded by “£35.7 million from Greater Manchester’s successful Zero Emission Bus Regional Areas (ZEBRA) bid” as well as £12.5 million from Transport for Greater Manchester (TFGM) and the Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA).
The new investment in Stockport is part of an ongoing decarbonisation of bus fleets across the UK by Stagecoach, with a further 122 electric buses being introduced to trasport networks across the UK in the next year.
Stagecoach has recently introduced its first fully electric bus fleets in Perth, Aberdeen, Inverness and Dunfermline in Scotland, and introduced a fleet of 32 double-decker EVs in Manchester in 2020. These new investments included Stagecoach West Scotland spending £15.7 million on a fleet of 27 Volvo BZL buses which began operating across Ayrshire last month.
The company is aiming to have a zero-emission fleet by 2035. Engineering director for Stagecoach, Sam Greer said, “we’re excited to be announcing our largest electric vehicle order to date, which will be a major step forward in improving air quality across the region. This builds further on the investment being made by Stagecoach across the country to support the transition to a zero-emission bus fleet.”
Stagecoach currently operates a total of 8,300 buses, coaches and trams across England, Scotland and Wales. In 2015, the company announced plans to install solar across its portfolio of bus depots.