First Glasgow Volvo B7RLE/Wright Eclipse Urban

The sad story of SimpliCITY

 

On the 26 May 2013, First Glasgow rebranded its services as SimpliCITY and made significant changes to these. The premise of SimpliCITY was threefold - 1. A regular and reliable service 2. Easy to understand routes and 3. Value for money fares. This was one of the biggest shake ups in the Glasgow network for several years and the second such major rebranding undertaken by First.

 

The first such rebranding took place in 1999. Having seen off Stagecoach in the infamous ‘Glasgow Bus War’ of 1997, First decided to use its biggest bus subsidiary as a test bed for its Overground concept. First identified that buses were at a bit of a disadvantage to rail and light rail. Passengers knew that if they stepped on a platform, a train or tram would arrive at some point. Buses didn’t have that feeling of security. In addition, as a result of deregulation, the bus network could be seen be unfamiliar and unfriendly.

 

To be fair there was a degree in truth in this. Many of the bus routes were based on earlier tram and trolley bus routes which had been extended beyond the city boundary into other areas following deregulation. Buses often ran convoluted routes to ensure that they ran through areas that enabled them to pick up as many passengers as possible and routes overlapped and shared common roads and streets. Some parts of the city, which had been recently developed were poorly served whereas other areas, where properties had been demolished as the city evolved, had more buses than they actually needed.

 

First identified key routes and guaranteed a ‘turn up and go frequency’ of ten minutes or less daytime on these. The services would be allocated a specific route colour and the buses would have this colour incorporated into the uniform style of branding on the vehicles, with heavy play on the Overground branding. Ideally, these would be run by low-floor accessible vehicles in First’s new ‘Barbie’ livery. However, Glasgow still had significant numbers of vehicles in its allover and somewhat dreary red livery so overground branding was also added to these. Some routes, such as the 262 (Glasgow - Airdrie), only offered a ten-minute frequency on part of their route but were still afforded full Overground status.

 

One route, the 62 (Baillieston- Faifley) was to be a showcase route. It was to be run with new articulated low-floor buses and had bus stops and road layouts adjusted to accommodate these. It would also have a 24-hour service on it, which mirrored the same route overnight. Previously, night bus services had run their own routes, generally in a loop from the city centre.

 

First Glasgow heavily promoted the Overground concept, which also had a map designed which shamelessly aped the London Underground in that it showed where the buses went, even if the map itself wasn’t quite accurate in terms of geography. Most of the routes ran into Glasgow proper, the exceptions being the 81 (Clydebank - Duntocher Circular) and the 201 (Airdrie - East Kilbride). The plan was that routes wouldn’t be changed for ten years, to give confidence to the public. The Glasgow Overground proved the concept and First rolled out the Overground to other locations where it was the dominant operator, mainly large cities. For smaller locations, it introduced a scaled down version which it called Metro.

 

However, the Overground only really covered around 25 of the services run by First Glasgow. It didn’t cover the others. The Overground saw some of these other services pruned, others withdrawn entirely. What was left was generally run by older vehicles and gave the impression of a two-tier service. Also the Strathclyde Partnership for Transport (SPT) was less than chuffed at the sudden need to cover lots of extra tendered services which it wasn’t expecting to and led to quite a public spat between the SPT and First Glasgow.

 

Of course, Glasgow has never been a city good at running branded buses and it was this that led to the Overground’s downfall. First Glasgow struggled to keep branded buses on the routes and as buses were repainted or replaced, the branding fell out of use. The routes ‘not changed for ten years’ proved to be somewhat hollow as routes were changed after as little as eighteen months. As the fleet became a sea of Barbie, the Overground branding disappeared and you’d struggle to find much mention of it on the fleet after a few years or indeed what it meant on the odd vehicle that did still carry it.

 

After that, most buses just reverted to plain old corporate Barbie livery and were used on whatever routes the schedulers saw fit to plonk them on. There were some route branding attempts over the years such as Clyde Coaster, the X-Class (for express routes to Cumbernauld), Braehead Bullet and Airlink but most buses just kept whatever corporate livery they happened to have.

 

Fast forward now to 2013. Glasgow has been selected as host city for the Commonwealth Games and First felt it was time for another revamp. This time, the idea was to simplify the Glasgow bus network. Routes were again recast and turn up and go frequencies were promoted. The major difference between the Overground and the new concept - called SimpliCITY - was that some of the routes were renumbered. The idea that the most prominent routes would be lower numbered, for example the aforementioned 62 became the 2. Other routes that shared common parts of the city with other services were combined, such as the 38/38A/38B/38C and 38E which replaced the 39 (38C), 42 (38B) and 213 (38E). This would group services into similar common numbers. This being Glasgow, there were some oddities such as service 40/40A (Clydebank/Milngavie- Easterhouse) which was renumbered 60/60A but the concept was to simplify the bus network.

 

Having learned from the Overground, no route-branding was to be used. In this case a standard branding was to be used, with branding highlighting the high frequency into Glasgow. Oddly, it never mentioned going back out of the city but maybe it was felt that once you went into Glasgow, you didn’t want to leave…It was designed to compliment the recently introduced First Olympia livery. A blue branding was selected but it sat uncomfortably on Barbie coloured buses.

 

It was launched just as First Glasgow was receiving a massive influx of new vehicles, mainly Alexander Dennis Enviro 300s, its biggest intake of vehicles for some years which were the first vehicles to feature First’s new design of interior as well as the new fangled wonder of wi-fi, although some FiG buses had this as far back as 2010. If that seems fancy new technology at the time, bear in mind it’s still not even standard on buses in London today. It was also receiving cascaded former First Games Transport (ex-First London) Dennis/TransBus Tridents and some cascaded Volvo B7TLs direct from First London, to make the fleet more accessible. This produced a notable uplift in fleet quality.

 

The new SimpliCITY branding was heavily promoted on these new to the fleet vehicles and there was to be information packs sent to most Glasgow households and social media was also to be used with cartoon style characters to promote it. Some buses also carried these characters with adverts encouraging use of things such as First’s mobile tickets. Although I must have been one of the households that never got one….

 

However the launch didn’t go exactly to plan. It was done over a weekend and because of that, not all the buses had time to have their electronic destination displays reprogrammed. As such much confusion reigned in the minds of the travelling public, especially when virtually new buses appeared with paper numbers in their windscreens initially. It didn’t present a good start and harked back to the good old days of the Scottish Bus Group where such paper destinations and numbers were commonplace.

 

However, over time SimpliCITY settled down. As more buses received the branding, it became more common, even if it didn’t really make clear what it’s connection was with Greater Glasgow was. Other places got in on the act, such as Leeds, which introduced the Pulse branding, in a similar style to SimpliCITY, but with a bright pink logo. This was to emphasise that First buses were the lifeblood and heartbeat of that lovely city. However, SimpliCITY was unique to Glasgow but in an eerily similar re-run of Overground, some routes were changed barely a year after SimpliCITY was launched. So much for simplification.

 

Only one route was ever route branded under SimpliCITY. This was the 9/9A service between Paisley/Braehead and Glasgow Buchanan Bus Station. This featured ‘SimpliCITY from First’ in the branding and the buses (Volvo B7RLEs/Wright Eclipse Urbans) had pink fronts on First Olympia livery. A similar design, but with pale blue fronts, was used on the 240 service between Glasgow and Lanarkshire. However in this case, a fleet name of First Lanarkshire Connect was used. There was no mention of SImpliCITY. Perhaps that was an omen.

 

However, a new broom in charge at the company arrived in 2017 and one of the first things he did was to launch research into SimpliCITY as to how effective it was. The message that came back was frank. It just hadn’t worked or resonated with the public. Most of the public thought it was another bus company and even its own staff were unsure what it was trying to state. So a decision was made that it would be discontinued in favour of the new First Urban livery and route branding. Bare in mind this was barely four years after it’s launch.

 

One of the few buses still carrying SimpliCITY colours today is 69067 (SF06GYC) seen here on the 7 service rather appropriately, given as it’s one of the routes created under the SimpliCITY, replacing parts of the 12 and 54 routes. This service is shortly to receive route-branded brand new Enviro 200EV’s from First’s large delivery of such vehicles, so I suspect this bus is in the twilight of its time with FIG. It’s missing the SimpliCITY branding on the lower panels between the wheels and some vehicles had the SimpliCITY name on the upper panels where the emergency exit is on the bus. But as the fleet is repainted and upgraded, SimpliCITY will pass into history as no more than a rather sad if slightly less than interesting footnote in the history of public transport in Scotland’s largest and greatest city.

 

One final note. Corgi produced a model of a Gemini in First Glasgow’s SimpliCITY’s branding (37541 - SF58ATY) which can be sourced if you look hard enough. It’s definitely one of the more sought after models and those that do appear are in high demand with premium prices. I suppose maybe that just goes to show there’s a demand for models of other than variations on Borismasters. Perhaps that’s SimpliCITY’s true legacy.

Done