Chris Moyes: It's a busman's holiday for the boss with public transport in his veins

A day in the life of the Chief executive of the Go-Ahead Group

After a breakfast of tea, wholemeal toast and banana ("It's good for your energy levels"), Chris Moyes leaves his flat in central London and makes his way on foot to the nearby Victoria station. From there he catches a train to Go-Ahead's East Croydon offices. "There is no such thing as a typical day but it's not unusual for me to start and finish it at different ends of the country," he says.

Had he begun the day at the company's headquarters in Newcastle, he would also have made the journey into work from his family home in Durham by train. "Only a fool or someone with a lot of spare time on their hands would choose to drive from Durham to Newcastle, and I'm neither of those."

Mr Moyes reckons he travels about 1,000 miles a week on public transport and he quite clearly relishes every single one of those miles. "It's one of the industries that gets you and gets into your blood," he says. "The beauty of where our offices are located is that I can do a huge amount of travelling by public transport which, as a matter of policy, I would choose to do anyway. Sometimes it involves using the competition's services but I prefer it when the bus or train I'm travelling on is one of mine."

9.00am

The morning continues with a series of board meetings of Go-Ahead's rail subsidiaries - it operates Southern Trains and the Thameslink service through a joint venture with Govia of France, part of the state-owned SNCF. Top of the agenda is passenger growth and train capacity. Traffic is growing again at 5 per cent - the level it was at before July's London bombings. Mr Moyes took the attacks particularly personally because the bombers made their way to London on a Thameslink service.

"Growth is returning to the railways but there is a limit to what we can do about meeting passenger demand. The new rolling stock was ordered with growth taken into account but the new trains do not hold as many passengers as the old ones. We are not yet seeing an increase in complaints about overcrowding."

12.30pm

Over a buffet lunch with senior rail colleagues, conversation turns to the new train franchise Go-Ahead has won. On 1 April, it will lose Thameslink but take on the new Integrated Kent franchise, which will include operating high-speed commuter services on the Channel Tunnel Rail Link (CTRL), giving Go-Ahead 30 per cent of London's rail commuter market. Mr Moyes is unruffled by the uncertainty over the future ownership of London & Continental Railways, the company behind the CTRL, following news that a consortium led by the former government adviser Adrian Montague is bidding for it.

"I've not seen anything yet which makes us concerned about what that could mean for domestic high-speed services. The Government has invested too much capital, politically and financially, to allow anything to get in the way."

2.00pm

Back into central London for a meeting at the Confederation of Passenger Transport, the bus and coach industry's trade body. That involves a train to Victoria and then the number 11 bus to Kingsway ("One of ours," says Moyes with an air of satisfaction). It used to be operated with a Routemaster but no longer. Mr Moyes confides that he actually owns one of the venerable beasts - "just for the fun and enjoyment of it" - but he is unsentimental about their disappearance from the streets of central London. "The Routemaster has had its day. The new buses are more comfortable and efficient."

The meeting is to discuss skills training - a subject dear to Mr Moyes' heart. He caught the transport bug 35 years ago while working as a bus conductor during his summer breaks at university. From there he went straight to the National Bus Company as a graduate trainee and has been in the industry ever since.

4.00pm

His meeting over, Mr Moyes dashes (by bus, naturally) to King's Cross to catch the 4.30 GNER service to Durham. During his short bus journey, he's thinking hard about how rising fuel costs are biting into group profits and what can be done to rein them in.

"Every penny on a litre of fuel costs us an extra £1m a year. Fuel used to be a cost which we accepted but didn't really have to think hard about. Now it is something that we have to deal actively with."

Go-Ahead is looking at a range of options, from raising bus fares to improving fuel efficiency. "It's simple things like making sure the tyres are inflated to the optimal pressure for maximum fuel efficiency. We also need to put pressure on the bus manufacturers to deliver more fuel-efficient vehicles. We used to get 8 miles to the gallon but now it is down to 5 or 6 miles. I would like to get back to 8."

7.15pm

The GNER service arrives in Durham. Moyes chairs the Council of Durham University, in effect its governing body, and has a meeting to attend that evening. Afterwards, he makes the one-and-a-half mile journey to his home by car - but only because there is no bus service. He's thinking about his next holiday. Last October, he and a group of friends travelled to Salzburg in Austria, where, you've guessed it, he sampled the local public transport system. Does this mean that Go-Ahead is about to follow the lead of rivals such as Arriva, First and National Express by plunging into overseas markets?

"We keep an eye on what is going on in Europe and, in fact, five or six years ago we spent a lot of time looking at potential opportunities but I just don't see any huge case for us to get involved. You have to ask yourself what we would bring to these markets other than enrichment for the people who would be trying to sell us their businesses."

Mr Moyes is similarly sceptical about the much-mooted chances of consolidation taking place among Britain's transport operators. "I don't really see much sign of it happening. In most cases, there would be competition problems at regional levels and you have to ask what would be in it for shareholders. We are not looking at any opportunities to consolidate but if we were, we would be the ones doing the acquiring."