Oxfordshire County Council this month applied for £32.8 million from the Zero Emission Bus Regional Areas (ZEBRA) scheme. Along with £6m from the council and £43.7m from bus companies Go Ahead and Stagecoach, the scheme could deliver 159 electric buses and the infrastructure to charge them in a package worth £82.5m. 

If successful, the electric buses would operate in an area stretching from Kidlington in the north to Sandford in the south, and from Cumnor in the west to Wheatley in the east. They would save an estimated 9,200 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions each year.

Councillor Tim Bearder, Oxfordshire County Council’s Cabinet Member for Highways Management, said: “This government's levelling up agenda aims to ‘bring the rest of the country's public transport up to London standards’. That is a laudable and ambitious aim. It can only be achieved by significant and determined investment in our bus network and doesn't currently match the reality on the ground.

“That is why I hope our transformational electric bus bid is supported. The county council will then do its bit to re-engineer the network to make that investment work effectively and efficiently. This is what government say they want, what our bus operators need and, ultimately, what our residents deserve.”

The bid demonstrates Oxfordshire’s ambitions to be a global leader in transport decarbonisation through the radical transformation of Oxford’s transport system, reconfiguring it for a zero-carbon future. Decarbonisation of Oxford’s bus network by 2030 is a vital part of these plans.

The government decision is expected next month and, if successful, the new electric buses should start to be delivered to Oxford’s roads between the summer of 2023 and the spring of 2024.