Company hails its ‘safe’ buses for staff

Technology enables social distancing

BUSINESS: Two entrepreneurs, who started their first business as students with a grant from Leeds University, are now looking to extend their safe bus travel app to Yorkshire.

Co-founders Sam Ryan and Barney Williams said their firm, Zeelo, provides safe, smart bus services for staff at firms such as Amazon, Argos and Ocado.

TWO ENTREPRENEURS, who started their first business as students with a grant from Leeds University, are now looking to extend their safe bus travel app to Yorkshire.

Co-founders Sam Ryan and Barney Williams said their firm, Zeelo, provides safe, smart bus services for staff at firms such as Amazon, Argos and Ocado.

They have developed the technology to enable passengers to maintain a safe social distance from other commuters during the coronavirus pandemic. It can also help to contact trace passengers if they develop symptoms later on.

The pair said that commuters will only return to public transport when there is more confidence in their safety amid the Covid-19 crisis.

Mr Ryan said: “Zeelo is a bus sharing platform, which provides smart transportation services for commuting and school runs.

“We mainly work with large companies such as Ocado, Jaguar Land Rover and Vodafone with bus services that help their staff get to work everyday. With schools, we help get the kids to and from school safely.

“We are primarily targeting areas where there is a lack of public transport. The aim is to move people out of cars and into bus transportation.”

Mr Ryan said that after the lockdown a lot of Zeelo’s clients closed their offices and many school partners closed their schools.

“About 20 per cent of our clients

were in essential services, so they still had critical workers needing to reach their workplace,” said Mr Ryan.

“This was for distribution centres like Amazon and supermarket distribution centres like Ocado. All of these workers were really critical in keeping the country moving during the lockdown period. So we saw quite a significant surge in enquiries and sales from employers who needed to get their staff to work everyday in a safe way. All of that was going on whilst public transport was being reduced.”

Mr Ryan said the firm quickly put in place measures to make the bus environment as safe as possible.

“We adapted our booking technology to manage safe capacities. All of our services became prebooked so we could enforce onboard social distancing,” he said.

“We also built a contact tracing notification system so if someone travelled on one of our services and later had symptoms, they could notify us and automatically we could notify passengers who had shared a vehicle with them in the previous seven to 14 days, which the employers we work with are very grateful for.”

Now the two co-founders are keen to return to their Yorkshire roots. “We are looking to expand into Yorkshire,” said Mr Ryan.

“We are very much focused on the regions – the West Midlands, the North West, South West and Wales. We are not yet in Yorkshire, which is hopefully a market we can get back into.”

The firm is targeting major employment hubs and employers in the region.

“We think this safe bus transport offer is more important than ever, in helping businesses to reopen safely. It’s the same with schools.”

Zeelo’s bus services have air filtration systems on board and temperature checks. “We really think we can play a significant part in the world reopening safely,” said Mr Ryan.

We think safe bus transport is more important than ever.

Sam Ryan, co-founder of Zeelo.