Bluebird Vehicles - Making Transport Accessible

29th November 2010

Bluebird Vehicles today are celebrating a pioneering partnership with Telford and Wrekin Council that began five years ago.

Since 2005 Bluebird Vehicles has been supplied Telford & Wrekin Council with 32 innovative coach-built low floor accessible buses, each one designed to make it as easy as possible for the elderly and disabled to use public transport buses.

The special coach built buses have a low floor that extends the whole length of the bus to make it easy to walk with limited mobility and manoeuvre a wheelchair. The buses also have a Kneeling capability so that the whole floor can be lowered and thus the step up into the bus is minimal or the wheelchair ramp angle is slight.

Councillor Adrian Lawrence, cabinet member for the Environment said, “Over the past five years we have been working with our community and Bluebird Vehicles to develop transport that meets the needs of everyone. The new buses mean that more and more people can get out and about leading very normal lives, which would not have been possible without the easy access buses. They have been so popular our community has travelled over two million miles in a relatively short time.

In 2008 the UK Community Transport Association recognised Telford & Wrekin Council as being one of the pioneers in the development and implementation of low floor easy access buses. Their CEO described our low floor fleet supplied by Bluebird as “being at the vanguard and blazing a trail for others to follow”, and this is something we are very proud of”, added councillor Lawrence.

Rob Miller, Managing Director for Bluebird Vehicles Ltd said, “Our five year partnership with Telford & Wrekin Council has helped Bluebird Vehicles to become one of the leading UK suppliers of low floor buses, and as more and more councils follow Telford and Wrekin’s good community practice our business will go from strength to strength. We are continuing to build our partnership with Telford and Wrekin and are scheduled to deliver a further eight buses in 2011 taking the fleet up to 40.”

Picture Left to right; Councillor Stephen Burell, Rob Miller MD Bluebird Vehicles, and Councillor Adrian Lewrence