First Leeds
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First Leeds is a bus operator based in and around Leeds in West Yorkshire, England. As a branch of First Group, it is the dominant public transport company in the city.
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[edit] History
Following bus deregulation in 1986, MetroBus's (the West Yorkshire PTE) fleet was was rebranded as Yorkshire Rider Ltd. The livery changed from verona green and buttermilk to a bright green and cream livery and a new logo with was a stylised "YR" logo, plus the name "Yorkshire Rider", there was an area on the logo which incorporated the town in which the bus garage for that bus was located. In October 1988 Yorkshire Rider was privatised being bought by its management for £23million.
Yorkshire Rider was then bought out by Badgerline, a Bristol based bus company, in 1994. Following the merger of Badgerline with GRT Ltd to form First Bus in 1995, its services were rebranded:
- Leeds City Link - covering the Leeds area and based at depots on Kirkstall Road, Bramley and Cherry Row
- Calderline - covering Halifax and Calderdale, and based at garages in Halifax and Todmorden
- Kingfisher Huddersfield - covering Kirklees, and with garages at Old Field House Lane
- Bradford Traveller - covering Bradford, and with a depot at Bowling Back Lane
Yorkshire Rider was later rebranded again and these names were replaced with First Leeds, First Calderline, First Huddersfield and First Bradford. Despite rebranding, the legal name of the company is still Yorkshire Rider Ltd, although it is now Yorkshire Rider trading as a First group service.
Another company, First Quickstep, is also part of the First group. It is based at the same Kirkstall Road depot as First Leeds but is a separate organization. It currently runs the Free City Bus service.
[edit] Fleet
It has an extremely large fleet which encludes a number of Wright Eclipse Gemini, Solar and articulated buses, which are Volvo B10LA's, as well as Dennis Darts with a mixture of Alexander Dash (new in 1995) and Plaxton Pointer (1996).
Other buses in the fleet include a large batch of Volvo B7TL's with Alexander ALX400 new between 2000-2 and a sizable batch of Volvo Olympians with Alexander Royale bodywork new in 1997/8, older double deckers include some Leyland Olympians with Roe and Optare bodywork (Optares being new in 1985-7, built to a Roe design) bought new between 1982-7 (of which a lot were withdrawn in 2006), they also have a big batch of Scania N113's, some new mainly with Alexander bodywork plus one with Northern Counties Palatine in 1990/1, some Alexanders from Black prince (new in 1989-91) and some long-wheelbase East Lancs E-type bodied examples new to Hull in 1989.
They also have a lot of Alexander Strider bodied Scania N113's new in 1993/4 at a time when single deckers were bough in large numbers, they also have 5 1994 L113's with the same bodywork which came from York when a year old. Low floor single deckers are mainly Wright bodied Scanias bough in 1998-9, early ones are L113 and later ones are the L94UB, the newest single deckers are a small batch of Wrightbus Eclipse Volvo B7RLE's bought in 2003-4. They operate with a livery with white, purple and pink.
[edit] 2006 Strike
In December 2006, employees working at First Leeds went on strike because of their company's retirement policy and a skeleton service ran on Monday 11 December causing mayhem all around Leeds. Another strike was called for the 23rd and 24th of December but this was called off shortly after the first strike.
