Speakers

A lifelong busman of over 40 years, David started in the industry as a traffic trainee with a subsidiary of the state-owned National Bus Company in 1978. Progressing through various operational and commercial management roles with a number of bus and coach operators, David also spent 10 years with Arriva both in the North West and Yorkshire and joined municipally owned Warrington Borough Transport as Managing Director in 2010. Following this was a period with First Bus, initially as Regional Operations Director across the South East and Midlands, then as Managing Director of Eastern Counties.

David joined French transport group RATP Dev, initially as Commercial Director North West, then was seconded to Bournemouth Transport Ltd as Managing Director in 2017. Following a change of direction within the group, David led a management buy-out on 1 July 2019, the company is the largest independent bus operator on the south coast, using the Yellow Buses and Yellow Coaches brands. The company employs around 400 staff, operating 140 buses and coaches, on a mixture of commercial local bus services, schools, private hire, rail replacement and National Express.

Yellow Buses updated its ticketing system to Ticketer in July 2018, contactless transactions now account for more than 40% of on-bus transactions, and the millionth contactless transaction occurred in October. We also offer a range of ways for customers to pay, we were an early user of the mobile app, and also have an ITSO platform commercial smart-card with on-line, on-bus and travel shop top-ups available.