Glenvale Travel (T/A Stagecoach Merseyside and South Lancashire) Scania NU230D/Alexander Dennis Enviro 400
Glenvale Travel….A potted history
Seen leaving Liverpool One Bus Station is 15564 (PX59CUX). It’s running for Glenvale Travel, which began life as part of the former Merseyside PTE’s bus operating arm and which Stagecoach acquired in 2005. But how did Stagecoach manage to end up buying part of Merseyside Transport but not own the whole lot? Well it’s a complicated story.
Flash back to just before deregulation in 1986. Merseyside PTE was the dominant operator within Merseyside and out of town services were provided by mainly National Bus Company subsidiaries Ribble Motor Services, - the vast company which stretched from Liverpool all the way to Carlisle - and Crossville, an equally vast company that extended westward into Wales.
To prepare for deregulation, Crossville was split in two, with the Welsh operations set up as Crossville Wales and the remaining English operations as just plain old Crossville. Also, Ribble’s Merseyside operations were hived off to form a separate company, North Western. Merseyside PTE’s operations became known as Merseybus.
North Western initially expanded in Merseyside by taking on most of the original Crossville, which had struggled to adapt to deregulation. North Western itself had by this stage been acquired by fast growing British Bus, one of the super blocs the industry was forming by this stage. British Bus also owned Crossville Wales, reassembling more or less the original Crossville. You have to ask if it was worth while splitting it up to begin with....Anyway, in 1996, British Bus got itself into trouble and was itself taken over by Cowie and the following year the new company was rebranded as Arriva. The Merseyside operations became part of Arriva North West and and were lumped in with some operations in Greater Manchester.
Merseybus meanwhile was privatised in 1992 and was sold to its employees and management and became MTL Holdings. It expanded of a sort with the purchase of London Northern, part of London Buses, when it was being sold off and also won the franchise for Regional Railways North East and rather oddly Merseyrail, which was odd when you saw how the Monopolies and Mergers Commission (MMC) reacted to National Express winning the Scotrail franchise. However, MTL seemed to overstretch itself and it then sold London Northern to Metroline and was then itself taken over in a pre-packaged administration deal by Arriva. This was Arriva’s first rail franchise win.
However, this left Arriva in an unusually strong position in Merseyside owning most of the public transport around Liverpool. So the MMC determined that it should sell one if it’s depots, at Gilmoss. The sale was a very protracted process and initially it looked like Go-Ahead was the front runner, beating off bids from CMT buses, Stagecoach and Metroline. However, the depot was eventually sold to its managers as Glenvale Transport Limited (GTL).
To stop Arriva from using its financial muscle to crush GTL, certain restrictions were placed on Arriva, preventing it from registering services competing with the fledgling company for three years. However there were no such restrictions on GTL competing with Arriva, something it exploited massively. It also retained the MTL red/cream livery, even repainting some buses back into that livery from Arriva colours.
GTL’s fleet consisted mainly of ex-London Leyland Titans and MCW Metrobuses moved to MTL pre-Arriva with a few Dennis Darts representing more ‘modern’ buses. Despite promised investment in brand new buses, none appeared. One feature of the fleet was drivers getting to name their buses after their children - a nice touch.
Expansion took place when CMT Buses was purchased, adding a second depot - at Aintree - to the company. CMT had by that stage a substantially more modern fleet. Following the purchase, the company then began to adopt an allover red livery - similar to the CMT livery although not quite the same.
From late 2003 until spring 2005 approximately 94 Alexander Dash bodied Dennis Darts and Volvo B6s were purchased from Stagecoach, along with smaller batches of Wright Handybus bodied Dennis Darts from Go North East and Northern Counties Paladin bodied Dennis Darts from Metroline, ironically once part of the fleet at MTL London, were purchased. However these vehicles were 9–12 years old and not the new vehicles GTL had promised.
However in Autumn 2004, the restrictions on Arriva ended and it began competing heavily with GTL with new buses and fare offers. GTL had never bought any new vehicles, despite promises on numerous occasions of significant reinvestment. Despite GTL's core routes in Kirkby and North Liverpool being considered as lucrative profitable bus territory, GTL had an annual turnover of approximately £25m. Furthermore, levels of car ownership were relatively low, with significant declines in patronage.
By March 2005, GTL had run up debts of approximately £7m and was rumoured to be struggling to meet its financial commitments. GTL was therefore put on the market and sold to Stagecoach, being named Stagecoach Merseyside.
As part of of a subsequent reorganisation of Stagecoach operating companies in the North West of England, the former Ribble licence was surrendered and what was left of that once great company was split, with the services in the north of Lancashire coming under the Cumberland licence as Stagecoach in Cumbria and North Lancashire with the other depots being added to the Glenvale licience to form Stagecoach South Lancashire and Merseyside.
Glenvale Travel (T/A Stagecoach Merseyside and South Lancashire) Scania NU230D/Alexander Dennis Enviro 400
Glenvale Travel….A potted history
Seen leaving Liverpool One Bus Station is 15564 (PX59CUX). It’s running for Glenvale Travel, which began life as part of the former Merseyside PTE’s bus operating arm and which Stagecoach acquired in 2005. But how did Stagecoach manage to end up buying part of Merseyside Transport but not own the whole lot? Well it’s a complicated story.
Flash back to just before deregulation in 1986. Merseyside PTE was the dominant operator within Merseyside and out of town services were provided by mainly National Bus Company subsidiaries Ribble Motor Services, - the vast company which stretched from Liverpool all the way to Carlisle - and Crossville, an equally vast company that extended westward into Wales.
To prepare for deregulation, Crossville was split in two, with the Welsh operations set up as Crossville Wales and the remaining English operations as just plain old Crossville. Also, Ribble’s Merseyside operations were hived off to form a separate company, North Western. Merseyside PTE’s operations became known as Merseybus.
North Western initially expanded in Merseyside by taking on most of the original Crossville, which had struggled to adapt to deregulation. North Western itself had by this stage been acquired by fast growing British Bus, one of the super blocs the industry was forming by this stage. British Bus also owned Crossville Wales, reassembling more or less the original Crossville. You have to ask if it was worth while splitting it up to begin with....Anyway, in 1996, British Bus got itself into trouble and was itself taken over by Cowie and the following year the new company was rebranded as Arriva. The Merseyside operations became part of Arriva North West and and were lumped in with some operations in Greater Manchester.
Merseybus meanwhile was privatised in 1992 and was sold to its employees and management and became MTL Holdings. It expanded of a sort with the purchase of London Northern, part of London Buses, when it was being sold off and also won the franchise for Regional Railways North East and rather oddly Merseyrail, which was odd when you saw how the Monopolies and Mergers Commission (MMC) reacted to National Express winning the Scotrail franchise. However, MTL seemed to overstretch itself and it then sold London Northern to Metroline and was then itself taken over in a pre-packaged administration deal by Arriva. This was Arriva’s first rail franchise win.
However, this left Arriva in an unusually strong position in Merseyside owning most of the public transport around Liverpool. So the MMC determined that it should sell one if it’s depots, at Gilmoss. The sale was a very protracted process and initially it looked like Go-Ahead was the front runner, beating off bids from CMT buses, Stagecoach and Metroline. However, the depot was eventually sold to its managers as Glenvale Transport Limited (GTL).
To stop Arriva from using its financial muscle to crush GTL, certain restrictions were placed on Arriva, preventing it from registering services competing with the fledgling company for three years. However there were no such restrictions on GTL competing with Arriva, something it exploited massively. It also retained the MTL red/cream livery, even repainting some buses back into that livery from Arriva colours.
GTL’s fleet consisted mainly of ex-London Leyland Titans and MCW Metrobuses moved to MTL pre-Arriva with a few Dennis Darts representing more ‘modern’ buses. Despite promised investment in brand new buses, none appeared. One feature of the fleet was drivers getting to name their buses after their children - a nice touch.
Expansion took place when CMT Buses was purchased, adding a second depot - at Aintree - to the company. CMT had by that stage a substantially more modern fleet. Following the purchase, the company then began to adopt an allover red livery - similar to the CMT livery although not quite the same.
From late 2003 until spring 2005 approximately 94 Alexander Dash bodied Dennis Darts and Volvo B6s were purchased from Stagecoach, along with smaller batches of Wright Handybus bodied Dennis Darts from Go North East and Northern Counties Paladin bodied Dennis Darts from Metroline, ironically once part of the fleet at MTL London, were purchased. However these vehicles were 9–12 years old and not the new vehicles GTL had promised.
However in Autumn 2004, the restrictions on Arriva ended and it began competing heavily with GTL with new buses and fare offers. GTL had never bought any new vehicles, despite promises on numerous occasions of significant reinvestment. Despite GTL's core routes in Kirkby and North Liverpool being considered as lucrative profitable bus territory, GTL had an annual turnover of approximately £25m. Furthermore, levels of car ownership were relatively low, with significant declines in patronage.
By March 2005, GTL had run up debts of approximately £7m and was rumoured to be struggling to meet its financial commitments. GTL was therefore put on the market and sold to Stagecoach, being named Stagecoach Merseyside.
As part of of a subsequent reorganisation of Stagecoach operating companies in the North West of England, the former Ribble licence was surrendered and what was left of that once great company was split, with the services in the north of Lancashire coming under the Cumberland licence as Stagecoach in Cumbria and North Lancashire with the other depots being added to the Glenvale licience to form Stagecoach South Lancashire and Merseyside.