It’s been a busy twelve months, as the bus industry has opened its collective cheque book on much more than one occasion.
Last summer, Go Ahead purchased Isle of Wight based Southern Vectis. Tellings Golden Miller sold its London & Surrey bus business to National Express in June. July saw Stagecoach buying Glenvale, that portion of MTL/Arriva left behind at the merger or North Western & MTL on Merseyside. Stagecoach was at it again in December, with the purchase of the Yorkshire Traction Group, as Go Ahead purchased the Birmingham Bus & Coach Company. Meanwhile, as the ink was drying on the deal between Transdev and municipal arms length Yellow Buses, Transdev purchased again, this time Blazefield in January 2006.
What’s now left of any significance? Who’s under the magnifying glass? Two broadly ex-National Bus subsidiaries, one of which is East Yorkshire, and 16 municipals.
Privatised in December 1986, one is ex-NBC Trent Barton, whose strap line is “the really good bus company”. It certainly has a proven and award-winning record of innovation, not dissimilar to Blazefield’s. Trent Barton was doing Rainbow Routes long before branding and slick marketing was fashionable.
Not only that, this month, Trent Barton announced its entire 249-strong bus fleet (not including 23 coaches) is the second UK major to convert to 100 super low floor easy access route operation (the first being Travel Dundee). Quite an achievement. It’s even promising to offer travel for free should it need to substitute a conventional. And quite a change from the sometimes eccentric operations of the former Barton firm.
Swindon’s Thamesdown Transport is an example of one of the last municipals. It has something in common with Transdev London United/London Sovereign – both have chosen the same consultant to hire their new managing directors.
Thamesdown’s fleet is relatively modern, but there's evidence of some older, conventional vehicles, though many here are on contract work. About 2/3 of its regular fleet are SLFs. It has a turnover of £10mil and describes itself as “small enough to encourage innovation and independence, yet big enough to offer a huge variety of challenges.”
In the same way that Trent Barton glories that it remains independent of the larger bus groups, Thamesdown trumpets itself as “one of the last remaining municipal bus companies in the UK”.
As 2006 develops, it’ll be interesting to watch what happens to both of these, and indeed the others in their respective sectors.
Thursday, 12 January 2006
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3 comments:
Thamesdown have recently moved to a new bus centre with excellent facilities. It is at the site of the old tip/recycling centre in Swindon, just off Great Western Way.
Hell, enough explaining, here's a map. It's off Barnfield Road.
Also, all the curbs at bus stops in Swindon are being raised to provide easy access to buses for those who need it.
Whilst not wanting to dismiss Trent Barton's achievements, I saw a high-floor bus standing in on service 199 [Mcr Airport-Stockport-Buxton] on Thursday, so they do still have high floor buses in the fleet on standby.
If that is to count as being an "all low-floor fleet" then I think credit should also go to Halton Transport, the erstwhile municipal operator in Widnes and Runcorn. They have a few Lynx 2's left, mainly for school services, but the rest of their fleet is all low-floor Dart SLFs - indeed, they've recently started selling off some of their older low floor vehicles!
Indeed, echoing jimmymac's comments, I think its Halton who has the award for first low floor operator. As he said, they're replacing low floors with low floors.
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