Case Study: Abellio UK achieves sustainable digitalisation and data-driven scheduling with Optibus

How Abellio UK Uses Optibus as a Sustainable Digitalisation Tool

Abellio UK, which operates 800 vehicles across 6 depots and serves about 1.2 million passengers daily with 16,000 employees, faced a rapid digitalisation challenge driven by COVID-19: move from fragmented, descriptive reporting to a single, diagnostic data view to manage schedules, driver retention, and the shift to electric buses. To address this, Abellio engaged Optibus and deployed Optibus modules including Timetable, Scheduling, Rostering, and EV.

Optibus delivered a cloud-based platform that linked Abellio’s source data, real-time APIs and analytics tools into a single source of truth, enabling faster schedule generation, real-time visibility of vehicle and driver needs, and diagnostic analytics. Using Optibus’ solution (integrated with Snowflake, Tableau and other tooling) Abellio identified drivers’ attrition drivers and targeted recruitment to mitigate losses, and supported fleet electrification—doubling pure electric buses from about 4% to an expected 8% by year-end.

Abellio

Graham Davies

Head of Transformation