Livery

The routeONE trade mag is again running its livery competition. This year sees 304 entries, 171 of which are coaches, 69 minibuses and 64 buses. There’s a bit of a crossover between the three categories as, for example, some of the entrants might look like double deck buses but they are actually used on school or private hire contracts as “coaches” (and some appear to have coach seats). Likewise, it’s sometimes difficult to categorise a “minibus” when legally such vehicles carry between nine and 16 passengers. Whatever.

We’ve mentioned before trends especially in coach livery design (e.g. over a quarter of all entrants, especially coaches & minibuses, are either dealer stock white or based thereon). But it’s on bus liveries I want to focus.

Where a large group has entered, they’ve chosen one-off, special liveries. There are simply no standard liveries from the Big Three: no Arriva inter-urban, no First Barbie and no Stagecoach standard Beachball. Yet, these particular three make up considerable numbers of PSVs on the road.

What does this say? That these liveries are so ordinary and everyday that we don’t really notice them any more? That they blend into the streetscape? That they are now lacking in imagination? That they are so universal as not to connect with the local population & environment they service? Surely if no other liveries were submitted these should be.

Take Arriva. It has two entrants. One is an ex-London Arriva Midlands Citaro bendy bus for its UNIlinx service that parodies Arriva’s interurban livery but in apple green rather than aqua. As such, it stands out as rather fresh, though its widespread adoption of livery might seem a little ordinary. And there’ an open top Bristol VR of Arriva Buses Wales, largely in Arriva pre-inter-urban but substituting yellow for creamy Cotswold.

The sole Stagecoach entry is its North Devon Wave service 21 livery, a two-tone blue variation of its standard beachball design.

East Yorkshire’s conservative yet smart livery is not represented. Instead, EYMS chooses its non-standard X55 Petuaria Express. Even Southern Vectis has chosen to submit its Island Breezers open top blue & orange rather than standard fleet livery of modern greens.

London’s small Sullivan Buses is about as “standard” is it gets, the sole representative of the capital’s extensive red bus fleet. Even here, Sullivan chooses white relief around both deck windows, somewhat reminiscent of the early part of the century when white seemed popular (e.g. Transdev London). Western Greyhound shows off a vehicle in standard green, Nottingham’s Your Bus, Warrington’s and Delaine Buses are all similarly presented in their usual colours. Together, these represent but a handful of designs.