First Berkshire & The Thames Valley

First Berkshire & The Thames Valley is a bus operator serving Bracknell, Slough and Wokingham, in England. It is part of First Group, a major bus and train operator with a turnover of nearly £2.5 billion a year and 62,000 employees across the UK and North America. The division operates around 120 vehicles and employs 300 staff.

History

First Berkshire & The Thames Valley was previously the Berks Bucks Bus Company,^[1] trading as the Beeline, one of the successor companies to Alder Valley, privatised in 1987. The business originally operated in High Wycombe, Reading and Newbury, as well as its current area, and was owned by a group called Q-Drive. In 1990 the High Wycombe operations were sold to the Oxford Bus Company, and in 1992 the Reading and Newbury operations were purchased by Reading Transport - which still operates them.

In 1993 Beeline bought the Slough operations of Luton & District Transport, until 1986 the Slough depot of London Country Bus Services and later part of the London Country North West division.

Beeline was sold in 1999 to First, who renamed the company First Beeline Buses Ltd.^[2]

First Group took the decision to corporately brand their services in 2001/2, and First Beeline took the trading name of First Berkshire & The Thames Valley.^[2]

Depots

• Bracknell (Market Street)
• Slough (Stanley Cottages)

Fleet summary

The company operates the following bus types:

• Volvo Olympian
• Volvo B9TL
• Dennis Dart SLF
• Scania K114
• Scania L113
• Scania L94
• Mercedes-Benz Citaro
• Dennis Trident 2
• Optare Solo

Services

The company currently operates just under 30 services, operating most of the town services in Bracknell, Slough and Wokingham, as well as services to surrounding areas such as Heathrow Airport, High Wycombe, Reading. The company was previously the dominant operator in Maidenhead, but town services there were abandoned in 2004 and are now run by Courtney Coaches.^[3]

As well as normal First branded services, there are five specially-branded groups of routes. Some routes to Heathrow Airport are run with blue "Heathrow 7 Series" Mercedes-Benz Citaros. Some of these are newer (2007) buses, some are from 2003 which were originally in a silver livery in a standard BAA template, all are now blue. Similarly, some routes in Slough are branded as "Slough Trading Estate Hoppa", and use red liveried Optare Solos (these were previously purple and branded as "Linx"). The Legoland Shuttle is run with yellow buses in Legoland graphics.

Coach services are also run under different brands. The Reading to Heathrow RailAir service uses "RailAir" branded services, and routes 700, 701 and 702 use Green Line-liveried vehicles.^[4]

Standard routes

Other services

First Berkshire & The Thames Valley operates a school bus scheme, using American-style school buses, running around Runnymede, from an outstation in Chertsey.

The company also used to operate Ride Pegasus!, a larger scheme run under contract to Surrey Country Council from an outstation in Merrow, Guildford. This stopped running in July 2010 after the council cut the funding for the scheme.^[5][6]

See also

• List of bus operators of the United Kingdom

References

External links

• First Berkshire & The Thames Valley website
• First Group website