A bus company is bringing a fleet of pollution-busting buses to Southampton that suck in dirty air in a bid to clean up the city.
Go-Ahead Group announced its plans to expand a fleet of buses fitted with air-filters after a 100-day pilot that saw one of the buses travel 9,000 miles while cleaning the air.
The trial, started in September 2018, saw the Bluestar bus extract 65g of particulate matter from the city air – the equivalent of a tennis ball.
Southampton was chosen as the location for the pilot following a 2018 World Health Organisation report, which warned that the city was at its limit of unsafe air pollution.
The company planned to now install filters on all five of its Bluestar buses travelling Route 7 – an 11.5 mile path running across the city.
Go-Ahead said it hoped to expand to other cities around the UK, including Manchester, Oxford, Brighton & Hove, Newcastle, Norwich, Durham, as well as parts of Sussex and Kent.
Chief executive David Brown said: “We already know that a fully loaded double-decker can take up to 75 cars off the road, reducing congestion and pollution.
“Now we have hard data showing that buses with the fitment of an air filter can actively improve air quality.”
The company estimated the expanded fleet within Southhampton could remove as much as 1.25kg of particulate matter from the air every year – and if fitted on 2,500 buses as much as 588kg
