8: Freebus (Torbay)
I’m taking a slight deviation from the usual full company potted history with this offering. Freebus wasn’t a separate company in its own right but it was certainly a separate operation, at least for the brief time it existed back in the summer of 1988. Hampshire Bus was behind it, with support from City of Oxford Motor Services, neither of whom would ever have been expected to run buses in Torbay in normal circumstances, let alone, free ones! It would seem a strange pairing too – Hampshire Bus was a part of Stagecoach, whilst COMS was independent, being management-owned since being sold out of the National Bus Company in January 1987.
So what was it all about?
Well, to set the scene we need to go back to the early-1980s when the bus industry was facing unprecedented levels of change and near-total upheaval. NBC was taking a long, hard look at itself and how it did things but a whole raft of other events was bubbling along in the background too.
The 1970s had been tough. Bus use was falling year after year, and had been since the late 1950s, networks were constantly being cut, labour relations had been problematical both for bus operators and for the UK’s bus manufacturers, and there was a general feeling that bus use was not a choice but something to be endured by people who had no other option. What’s more, the 1980s had started with a major recession and a new Conservative government which was talking about both deregulation of the industry and of its dreams to sell off the nationalised National Bus Company, Scottish Bus Group and Passenger Transport Executives.
NBC had undertaken a massive research project looking at how its offerings matched demand (the Market Analysis Project or MAP) and in a major change of policy from when it was first created, it was progressively breaking up its larger operating companies into smaller units with their management teams based locally, on the ground, and not in distant head offices. It relaxed its rules on corporate liveries and fleetnames and allowed local management to embrace new marketing initiatives, brandings and colour schemes – ideas that were becoming increasingly important in 1980s commerce and retail but which the dull and traditional bus industry had been slow to see the potential of. It encouraged these initiatives and went headlong into developing new intensive minibus networks in towns and cities up and down the country, where colourful, imaginatively marketed small buses on high frequencies, able to penetrate deep into housing estates were proving that with some effort and creativity, it was possible to successfully halt years of decline and get people using buses again.
And… if all of that wasn’t too much, having already deregulated coach services back in 1980, the government now announced that bus services would follow suit as of 26 October 1986. Essentially this would allow companies to compete with each other out on the roads and it would no longer be necessary to apply for a licence to run each route. What’s more the privatisation process would begin with sales of the NBC companies kicking the process off at much the same time. As if companies didn’t have enough to worry about!
Actually the NBC companies adapted surprisingly well to all of this change, and the opportunities it offered, such that come De-regulation Day in October 1986, several of them were already looking to expand into new areas and not just to react to the numerous new upstarts who had registered competing services in their traditional heartlands, and often only being interested in just the more lucrative sections of routes or the busier weekday periods, rather than evenings and weekends as well.
One of those operators with expansionist aspirations was Devon General, the second NBC company to be sold (in August 1986), and the first actual bus operating company to go, after National Holidays. It had its eyes on Oxford, where Chairman, Harry Blundred, had worked earlier in his career. City of Oxford Motor Services had never embraced the idea of minibuses to the same extent that others, such as Devon General, had done and still operated city routes with double-deckers. Harry Blundred created Thames Transit to launch a new high frequency minibus service from the city centre to the large Blackbird Leys housing estate from March 1987, along with a coach service to London under the ‘Oxford Tube’ name. Both routes would compete head to head with COMS’s services and further competitive routes would follow.
Similarly, another location he identified as ripe for a modern minibus network was Basingstoke, in the heart of Hampshire Bus territory, an operator which had been the first of three NBC bus companies sold to a small but ambitious Scottish coach company, by the name of Stagecoach. Twenty-four new Ford Transit minibuses were duly bought for this fledgling ‘Basingstoke Transit’ business, which was set to commence operating in late summer, 1988.
As we would come to see over the ensuing years, Stagecoach was not an entity prepared to take such intimidation lying down. It would retaliate... and it would do so with assistance from COMS, which was already facing competition, as described above, from Thames Transit. The 1985 Transport Act, allowed operators to run services anywhere, providing registrations had been lodged 42 days previously and an operating licence was held in the appropriate traffic area. Hampshire Bus was covered by the Western Traffic Area…. as was Torbay… and so in late June 1988, Hampshire Bus, along with eight freshly-painted all-white Leyland Nationals rolled into South Devon. Freebus had arrived. Free because, presumably, 42 days’ notice wasn’t or couldn’t be given, and so no fares were able to be charged.
The buses in question had all been drawn from Winchester’s allocation and were given, red signwriting advertising a route from Babbacombe through Torquay and Paignton to Paignton Zoo, with a headway of every ten minutes. This was the height of the summer tourist season, and whilst the Freebus route didn’t mirror any Devon General service exactly, it was clearly designed to cover the busiest sections of the lucrative 12 route and cause DG as much pain as was possible.
Freebus started on Monday 27 June and as word quickly spread, loadings increased such that standing passengers soon became the norm. Devon General’s frequent Bayline minibuses couldn’t compete as people preferred to wait for a Freebus, even though they may not have been able to board. Well, it was free, so you would, wouldn’t you? Don’t forget that this was 1988 and free concessionary passes were still many years away.
It’s believed that the drivers were provided, not just by Hampshire Bus, but from elsewhere within Stagecoach, and presumably Oxford too. No Hampshire Bus or Stagecoach names were carried (legal lettering aside), although a few buses did have Oxford Bus Company stickers in their windscreens. Overnight parking and (most likely) engineering support was provided by Yelloway-Trathen Express at their depot in Paignton.
Allegedly intended to run for up to a couple of months, Freebus actually lasted just eleven days, finishing on Thursday 7 July, as a result of Devon General having obtained a court injunction. By the following morning, the buses had left the Bay and all the bus stop publicity had been removed… quite eerie in some ways, as with all traces of it having gone, one was almost left wondering if Freebus had really happened at all!
It did happen, of course, and whilst it didn’t lead to any obvious changes to the situation in Oxford, Stagecoach did come to an agreement with Devon General to buy the Basingstoke operation (but not the buses) before it actually started. The Basingstoke routes did commence, with Stagecoach’s own vehicles, but were quickly integrated with the rest of their Basingstoke operation.
In fact, Transit Holdings (owners of Devon General) appeared to develop a very positive working relationship with Stagecoach following Freebus, as Stagecoach subsequently hired a batch of Bayline Transits for use in Perth (the buses being spare in Devon due to reduced winter frequencies), bought much of DG’s surplus Bristol VR and Leyland National stock when the big buses were replaced with Mercedes minicoaches in 1989 and ultimately, of course, went on to buy both DG and Bayline in 1996, followed by Thames Transit and Docklands Transit the following year. Ironic in some ways, of course, as the purchase of Thames Transit, would mean that Stagecoach was now in long-term, head to head competition with its former Freebus partner!
The photo shows Hampshire Bus 747 (FPR 63V), named “The Tourist” passing Preston Gardens on its way to Babbacombe. This bus didn’t carry the route details above the windows which most (all?) of the others did.
8: Freebus (Torbay)
I’m taking a slight deviation from the usual full company potted history with this offering. Freebus wasn’t a separate company in its own right but it was certainly a separate operation, at least for the brief time it existed back in the summer of 1988. Hampshire Bus was behind it, with support from City of Oxford Motor Services, neither of whom would ever have been expected to run buses in Torbay in normal circumstances, let alone, free ones! It would seem a strange pairing too – Hampshire Bus was a part of Stagecoach, whilst COMS was independent, being management-owned since being sold out of the National Bus Company in January 1987.
So what was it all about?
Well, to set the scene we need to go back to the early-1980s when the bus industry was facing unprecedented levels of change and near-total upheaval. NBC was taking a long, hard look at itself and how it did things but a whole raft of other events was bubbling along in the background too.
The 1970s had been tough. Bus use was falling year after year, and had been since the late 1950s, networks were constantly being cut, labour relations had been problematical both for bus operators and for the UK’s bus manufacturers, and there was a general feeling that bus use was not a choice but something to be endured by people who had no other option. What’s more, the 1980s had started with a major recession and a new Conservative government which was talking about both deregulation of the industry and of its dreams to sell off the nationalised National Bus Company, Scottish Bus Group and Passenger Transport Executives.
NBC had undertaken a massive research project looking at how its offerings matched demand (the Market Analysis Project or MAP) and in a major change of policy from when it was first created, it was progressively breaking up its larger operating companies into smaller units with their management teams based locally, on the ground, and not in distant head offices. It relaxed its rules on corporate liveries and fleetnames and allowed local management to embrace new marketing initiatives, brandings and colour schemes – ideas that were becoming increasingly important in 1980s commerce and retail but which the dull and traditional bus industry had been slow to see the potential of. It encouraged these initiatives and went headlong into developing new intensive minibus networks in towns and cities up and down the country, where colourful, imaginatively marketed small buses on high frequencies, able to penetrate deep into housing estates were proving that with some effort and creativity, it was possible to successfully halt years of decline and get people using buses again.
And… if all of that wasn’t too much, having already deregulated coach services back in 1980, the government now announced that bus services would follow suit as of 26 October 1986. Essentially this would allow companies to compete with each other out on the roads and it would no longer be necessary to apply for a licence to run each route. What’s more the privatisation process would begin with sales of the NBC companies kicking the process off at much the same time. As if companies didn’t have enough to worry about!
Actually the NBC companies adapted surprisingly well to all of this change, and the opportunities it offered, such that come De-regulation Day in October 1986, several of them were already looking to expand into new areas and not just to react to the numerous new upstarts who had registered competing services in their traditional heartlands, and often only being interested in just the more lucrative sections of routes or the busier weekday periods, rather than evenings and weekends as well.
One of those operators with expansionist aspirations was Devon General, the second NBC company to be sold (in August 1986), and the first actual bus operating company to go, after National Holidays. It had its eyes on Oxford, where Chairman, Harry Blundred, had worked earlier in his career. City of Oxford Motor Services had never embraced the idea of minibuses to the same extent that others, such as Devon General, had done and still operated city routes with double-deckers. Harry Blundred created Thames Transit to launch a new high frequency minibus service from the city centre to the large Blackbird Leys housing estate from March 1987, along with a coach service to London under the ‘Oxford Tube’ name. Both routes would compete head to head with COMS’s services and further competitive routes would follow.
Similarly, another location he identified as ripe for a modern minibus network was Basingstoke, in the heart of Hampshire Bus territory, an operator which had been the first of three NBC bus companies sold to a small but ambitious Scottish coach company, by the name of Stagecoach. Twenty-four new Ford Transit minibuses were duly bought for this fledgling ‘Basingstoke Transit’ business, which was set to commence operating in late summer, 1988.
As we would come to see over the ensuing years, Stagecoach was not an entity prepared to take such intimidation lying down. It would retaliate... and it would do so with assistance from COMS, which was already facing competition, as described above, from Thames Transit. The 1985 Transport Act, allowed operators to run services anywhere, providing registrations had been lodged 42 days previously and an operating licence was held in the appropriate traffic area. Hampshire Bus was covered by the Western Traffic Area…. as was Torbay… and so in late June 1988, Hampshire Bus, along with eight freshly-painted all-white Leyland Nationals rolled into South Devon. Freebus had arrived. Free because, presumably, 42 days’ notice wasn’t or couldn’t be given, and so no fares were able to be charged.
The buses in question had all been drawn from Winchester’s allocation and were given, red signwriting advertising a route from Babbacombe through Torquay and Paignton to Paignton Zoo, with a headway of every ten minutes. This was the height of the summer tourist season, and whilst the Freebus route didn’t mirror any Devon General service exactly, it was clearly designed to cover the busiest sections of the lucrative 12 route and cause DG as much pain as was possible.
Freebus started on Monday 27 June and as word quickly spread, loadings increased such that standing passengers soon became the norm. Devon General’s frequent Bayline minibuses couldn’t compete as people preferred to wait for a Freebus, even though they may not have been able to board. Well, it was free, so you would, wouldn’t you? Don’t forget that this was 1988 and free concessionary passes were still many years away.
It’s believed that the drivers were provided, not just by Hampshire Bus, but from elsewhere within Stagecoach, and presumably Oxford too. No Hampshire Bus or Stagecoach names were carried (legal lettering aside), although a few buses did have Oxford Bus Company stickers in their windscreens. Overnight parking and (most likely) engineering support was provided by Yelloway-Trathen Express at their depot in Paignton.
Allegedly intended to run for up to a couple of months, Freebus actually lasted just eleven days, finishing on Thursday 7 July, as a result of Devon General having obtained a court injunction. By the following morning, the buses had left the Bay and all the bus stop publicity had been removed… quite eerie in some ways, as with all traces of it having gone, one was almost left wondering if Freebus had really happened at all!
It did happen, of course, and whilst it didn’t lead to any obvious changes to the situation in Oxford, Stagecoach did come to an agreement with Devon General to buy the Basingstoke operation (but not the buses) before it actually started. The Basingstoke routes did commence, with Stagecoach’s own vehicles, but were quickly integrated with the rest of their Basingstoke operation.
In fact, Transit Holdings (owners of Devon General) appeared to develop a very positive working relationship with Stagecoach following Freebus, as Stagecoach subsequently hired a batch of Bayline Transits for use in Perth (the buses being spare in Devon due to reduced winter frequencies), bought much of DG’s surplus Bristol VR and Leyland National stock when the big buses were replaced with Mercedes minicoaches in 1989 and ultimately, of course, went on to buy both DG and Bayline in 1996, followed by Thames Transit and Docklands Transit the following year. Ironic in some ways, of course, as the purchase of Thames Transit, would mean that Stagecoach was now in long-term, head to head competition with its former Freebus partner!
The photo shows Hampshire Bus 747 (FPR 63V), named “The Tourist” passing Preston Gardens on its way to Babbacombe. This bus didn’t carry the route details above the windows which most (all?) of the others did.