Stagecoach has opened Britain's first privately-funded bus park and ride in Greater Manchester and will look at copying the model in Scotland.
It said the £3million investment in Stockport has underlined the key role of the private sector in maximising the transport and economic benefits of the government's devolution plans for the region.
Martin Griffiths, Stagecoach chief executive, said: "With continued austerity and stretched public funding, the private sector more than ever has to be part of the solution."
The 400-space park and ride facility, which has a cycle hub part-funded through Transport for Greater Manchester, will be served by a £12m fleet of 40 hybrid electric buses equipped with free wi-fi.
Stagecoach spokesman Steve Stewart said: "This privately-funded initiative is the first of its kind in the UK, so we will be monitoring the progress of the facility in Greater Manchester closely. If, as we hope, it is successful we will consider whether there is a business case elsewhere."
He added: " We already frequently work in partnership with local authorities on park and ride services, such as the highly successful Ferrytoll facility in Fife which doubled in size as a result of large numbers of car users seeing the benefits of catching the bus."
Meanwhile Mr Griffiths is among five executives and directors who have been awarded deferred shares worth £672,000 under the June 2012 incentive plan, which vested on June 30. All the shares were sold except for 14,748, just over half his award, which were retained by finance director Ross Paterson.
The sales were by Mr Griffiths (76,483 shares) chairman Sir Brian Souter (55,762), Dale Moser (37.320) Robert Montgomery (18,143) and Mr Paterson (13,142) all at a price of 407.2p.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article