30 May 2011

Eco buses hit Lincoln streets
Stagecoach introduced a trial fleet of buses running on household waste in Lincoln. The buses work on biomethane fuel made from converted recycled waste and were first announced in March.

These are the first buses of their kind, and the first 11 will be in service mainly around the Cathedral Quarter and several other Lincoln routes. Stagecoach also built a special refuelling facility for the hybrid fuel buses at the Great Northern Terrace depot near Lincoln.

Brian Souter, Chief Executive of Stagecoach Group, identified that waste is a big issue for every family and household up and down the country, so this is an innovative way to deal with the problem.

It means we can offer greener travel to our customers and cut our own carbon footprint. You could say its another rubbish idea from Stagecoach! But we certainly hope it will help make a big difference to the local environment in the community.

The environmental project has been set up by Lincolnshire County Council and the East Midlands Development Agency. Lincolnshire County Council gave 260,000 towards the project and the East Midlands Development Agency (EMDA) gave a further 100,000.

Councillor William Webb, Lincolnshire County Council Executive Member for Highways and Transport said: There is a growing need to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels as approximately 40% of Lincolnshires CO2 emissions are associated with transportation.

Diana Gilhespy, Executive Director of Regeneration at EMDA, was excited about the trial taking place in Lincolnshire: We are hopeful that the trials will prove to be successful in proving the effectiveness of this technology, and that as a result, more buses will be converted to run on bio-methane fuel in future.

Stagecoach launched in 2007 the UKs first bio-buses running on 100% off cooking oil, and recently have installed an intelligent lighting system on some buses, which can tell the amount of light needed.

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