New electric buses ordered in £500m deal

The buses will be built by Wrightbus in Ballymena, Northern Ireland

New electric buses are being ordered for Salisbury and the Isle of Wight as part of efforts to decarbonise bus fleets.

The vehicles are included in a £500m deal for one of the country's largest bus companies, Go Ahead, backed by the government.

First announced in March, Salisbury Reds will get 11 double-deckers and 12 single-deck buses.

Southern Vectis will get 22 electric double-deckers from early 2026.

Salisbury's park-and-ride services currently use electric buses.

The service which links Stonehenge with Salisbury railway station will be one of the routes to benefit from the new buses.

The first vehicles are expected to arrive next year. Currently, only park-and-ride sites in Salisbury use electric buses.

The city's depot charging infrastructure will also have to be upgraded.

The government announcement reconfirms an earlier order for Southern Vectis on the Isle of Wight.

Its new electric vehicles will be used on routes 1, 5 and 9, linking Newport with Cowes, East Cowes and Ryde.

The Newport depot will also be upgraded with charging infrastructure.

Speaking at the time, Southern Vectis managing director, Andrew Wickham, said they would put the island "at the forefront of sustainable transport”.

At more than £500,000 each, electric buses are double the cost of conventional diesel vehicles.

All the new vehicles will be built by Wrightbus at Ballymena in Northern Ireland.

The Department for Transport (DfT) said the investment would also support an additional 2,000 jobs across the wider UK supply chain by 2026.

Zero-emission buses will also be delivered to Go Ahead subsidiaries in Plymouth, Gloucestershire, East Yorkshire and London.

The DfT stated that, for every vehicle manufactured, 10 trees would be planted in the towns and cities where the buses are deployed.

Matt Carney, chief executive of Go-Ahead Bus, said the investment would "accelerate the transition to zero-emission fleet across the UK".

"We are proud to be working in partnership with the UK government and local authorities to deliver transformational environmental change for communities, while supporting UK jobs and the growth of the country's supply chain," he added.

Bus routes in Oxford, Portsmouth and Fareham, along with park-and-ride buses in Guildford, are already partly operated by similar electric vehicles.