Phil Pannell presents Stephen Neppiras with a long service award
Driver Stephen Neppiras has been around the block – in fact he’s just completed 30 years working for Yellow Buses.
And the popular busman was presented with a certificate to mark the milestone.
Stephen in fact joined the forerunner of Yellow Buses 40 years ago as a conductor then worked for several other companies before returning.
He has clocked up many thousands of miles across the network in Bournemouth, Poole and east Dorset and has no intention of pulling on his handbrake for good.
He said: “I have seen a lot of change but one thing that has improved are the buses.
“They are so much easier to drive – and the latest ticket machine is the best I have ever worked with.
“It has always been a camaraderie job and I have made so many friends.”
Service delivery director Phil Pannell presented Stephen with the certificate and a token of Yellow Buses’ appreciation of his service.
Phil said: “Stephen is one of those drivers who you don’t see. And that is a good thing. He does his job and if he encounters any problems he sorts them out.
“He is highly experienced and reliable and I’m glad he’s got some more years in him.”
Note to journalists:
For more information, please contact: Andrew Diprose, Director, Deep South Media Ltd, PR consultants to Yellow Buses, on 01202 534487, or Ed Baker on 01202 534487 or 07788 392965.
About Yellow Buses: Yellow Buses operates a fleet of 140 buses and 16 coaches with more than 410 staff.
The company carries just under 15m passengers a year with its vehicles operating nearly five million miles across the Bournemouth, Poole, Christchurch and East Dorset area.
Yellow Buses was named as the top operator in Bournemouth and Poole – and joint third nationally – in the latest annual Bus Passenger Survey, produced by the independent watchdog Transport Focus,
Yellow Buses is part of RATP Group, the world’s fifth largest public transport provider.
RATP Dev in the United Kingdom and Ireland
The United Kingdom is a strategic market for RATP Dev with revenues in excess of £300 million and a workforce of over 4,500.
RATP Dev’s presence in the United Kingdom comprises the following activities:
- RATP Dev London, through its subsidiaries London United, London Sovereign and Quality Line:
– employs 3,400 staff
– operates more than 1,000 buses under contract to Transport for London (TfL)
– transports more than 200 million passengers per annum in the British capital
- Under the Yellow Buses brand, RATP Dev’s subsidiary Bournemouth Transport operates award-winning commercial bus services in and around Bournemouth. Further de-regulated bus services are provided also by the Bath Bus Company.
- RATP Dev has significant coach operations, primarily through Epsilon Travel (Surrey) and Selwyns Travel (Cheshire).
- RATP Dev is a major player in the hop-on, hop-off sightseeing bus tour activity. Following its 2014 acquisition of The Original London Sightseeing Tour, RATP Dev now has operations of this kind in London, as well as Paris and New York.
- In 2015, RATP Dev launched Slide, an innovative minibus service in Bristol, using digital technology to offer personalised transport to non-bus users on a route and at a time of their choosing via an app.
About RATP Dev
Founded in 2002, RATP Dev operates and maintains urban transportation systems in 14 countries on four continents (United Kingdom, France, Italy, Switzerland, Algeria, Morocco, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, India, China, South Korea, the Philippines, and the United States of America). With more than 1.5 billion passengers travelling on its networks every year, RATP Dev demonstrates every day its extensive and renowned expertise in a wide range of mobility services, ranging from rail, regional express rail, tramway, to bus, cable car and sightseeing activities. RATP Dev leverages in France, outside of Paris, and across international markets, the technical expertise and experience of RATP Group, the leader in driverless and tramway operations and operator of the Paris network, one of the largest public transportation networks in the world.
About RATP Group
With nearly 16 million daily passengers worldwide, RATP Group is the fifth largest urban transportation operator in the world. With its 14 metro lines (including two driverless lines), two regional express rail lines, seven tramway lines and 350 bus lines, the multimodal network operated by RATP in the Paris region is the largest in the world to be managed by a single company.
RATP Group can devise, design and implement infrastructure development projects, operate and maintain networks irrespective of the mode of transportation (metro, regional train, tramway and bus) and develop innovative services to promote mobility (including passenger information, remote ticketing, pricing and customer marketing). The automation of the Paris metro’s line 1 completed at the end of 2012 is a world’s first and once again demonstrated RATP Group skill in concluding particularly complex projects.
RATP Group exports its know-how all over the world; in engineering through Systra, its subsidiary jointly owned with SNCF, in operations and maintenance via its wholly-owned RATP Dev subsidiary and in innovative services to promote mobility through its IXXI subsidiary.
RATP Group has a workforce of nearly 60,000 employees worldwide and in 2016 generated revenue of 5.4 billion euros.
