Growth

Growth is essential for business. As more customers buy services turnover grows, this leads to extra profit which can then be put back into expansion.

Go-Ahead looked at ways of integrating car journeys with public transport.

Go-Ahead has grown steadily since 1994. The turnover and profit figures shown in the introduction demonstrate this. The company grows in two main ways:

• organic growth – ploughing back profits into expanding its businesses
• taking over other businesses.

Both approaches work well when extra resources are put into building up what is already a profitable business.

While Go-Ahead would recognise that its biggest competitor is the private car, its ownership of Meteor Parking has led to a change in this approach. Public transport cannot always match the flexibility of the private car, so Go-Ahead looked at ways of integrating car journeys with public transport. It encourages individuals to use public transport for as much of their journey as possible. Park & Ride and rail station parking have made a large contribution to reducing the congestion in urban centres.

Rail is Go-Ahead's second major business area. It accounts for one out of three journeys made on public transport. More than 280 million passenger journeys are made on Go-Ahead's train franchises for Southern and Southeastern in the south-east of England.