The career journeys of four women at ComfortDelGro’s UK & Ireland Bus & Coach businesses show the opportunities on offer

 
Women play a vital role across ComfortDelGro’s UK & Ireland Bus & Coach businesses

 
Women play a vital role across ComfortDelGro’s UK & Ireland Bus & Coach businesses. Whether at Metroline in London and Manchester, Adventure Travel in Wales, Scottish Citylink in Scotland or Irish Citylink in Ireland, women are in roles at all levels, from driving and engineering to management and senior leadership teams. In recognition of the achievements of women in the bus and coach industry, here’s a closer look at some of the women across ComfortDelGro in UK & Ireland.

Monika Rudz, Metroline London
Monika Rudz is a bus driver at Metroline London’s Uxbridge Garage. For Monika, driving is a family affair; her father and brother both drove buses in her native Poland, and her husband also drives for Metroline, encouraging Monika to join him on the road. More than three years on, it’s a job she enjoys deeply.

“Doing this job, I’m never bored because every day is different, even when doing the same duty,” Monika explains. “Working as a spare driver on multiple routes, it’s her interactions with her passengers that she enjoys most.

“It’s always a very nice experience when little children wave to me at the end of the journey to say goodbye,” she says. “The biggest reward in this job is when you hear thank you from your passengers.”

Monika believes that male colleagues can support women in the bus industry by “building a good atmosphere and sharing their experience”.

Chelsea Glover, Metroline Manchester
According to Women in Bus and Coach, women account for 10% of the people in the bus and coach industry. This is particularly apparent in the engineering sector. However, this has begun to change as more women enter the sector. For Chelsea Glover, an auto electrician at Metroline Manchester’s Sharston depot, her entry into the industry was largely accidental.
“I’d gone into college to do hairdressing and I wasn’t very good at it, so I tried to fix the straighteners to keep on the course,” Chelsea explains, “[the course tutor] said to me,
‘come back again, but wear scruffy clothes’, and she took me across to the electrics and I started doing electrics at college and then carried on from there.”

They’ve been really on top of anything I’ve asked to do

One of the hundreds of employees who joined Metroline Manchester on January 5, 2025, Chelsea has felt supported since the company began operating on the Bee Network.

“Metroline has been really good with me in the sense that, I’ve been an electrician for 17 years and I wanted to get into management, and as soon as they’ve come in, they’ve put me on courses, they put me through an eight week programme,” she explains, “I couldn’t have asked for more help in that sense. They’ve been really on top of anything I’ve asked to do; the help behind progression here is really good.”

Breege Lynch, Irish Citylink
It’s not only on the front lines that women excel at ComfortDelGro’s UK & Ireland businesses. Breege Lynch has been a leading woman in Ireland’s transport industry for many years and joined ComfortDelGro’s Coach business Irish Citylink as operations manager following the GoBus acquisition in July 2022, having served in a senior role at GoBus since 2009. Working under Irish Citylink’s regional general manager Sarah Comer, Breege has not only upheld her demanding operational responsibilities but has also gone far beyond expectations by leading complex projects that directly impact the business’s growth and performance. Notably, she spearheaded the implementation of a new website and app, taking on the role of project manager while simultaneously handling her day-to-day duties. Breege’s impact has been felt across all levels of the business. Thanks to her leadership, the transition was handled in a way that minimised disruption for customers and staff alike.

For Breege, “collaboration is the core of growth and if we remain driven and align ourselves, we can achieve remarkable things”.

Simone Walsh, Scottish Citylink
It’s a similar story in Scotland. Simone Walsh joined the industry in 2012 as a graduate trainee, building experience in operations roles at depots in both England and Scotland, until she joined Scottish Citylink as an operations director in 2019. Today she is managing director at Scottish Citylink and megabus and was recently awarded ‘Best Woman in Coach’ at the Women in Bus and Coach Summit 2025.

On winning the award, Simone said: “It’s clear we need to continue to work together to tackle the bias that’s still present today, for the sake of the next generation of women and to help inspire them into the world of bus and coach – because it really is an amazing industry to be a part of.”

With women like Monika, Chelsea, Breege and Simone leading the way across ComfortDelGro’s UK & Ireland businesses, there is no doubt that the future is bright for women in bus and coach.

 
This story appears inside the latest issue of Passenger Transport.

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