Megabus (United Kingdom)

Megabus (also sometimes branded as megabus.com and Megabusplus) is a UK coach service operated by Stagecoach Group. It started in 2003 and as of February 2010 operated 19 UK coach routes serving 41 destinations in England, Scotland and Wales. Some services link with Megatrain services which are also operated by Stagecoach. Advertised fares start at £1, with a 50p booking fee using a yield management model.

Overview

Megabus (branded as megabus.com on its vehicles), provides an intercity scheduled coach service in the United Kingdom operated by Stagecoach Group which started in 2003 and operates 19 UK coach routes serving 41 destinations in England, Scotland and Wales.

Megabusplus

Megabusplus is a coach and train combination with coaches operating feeder services from locations in Yorkshire and East Midlands Parkway railway station where passengers transfer to an East Midlands Trains service to London St Pancras.^[2] Unlike Megatrain, this service is available daily. When engineering works disrupt rail services between London and East Midlands Parkway, the service is run using direct coaches from London Victoria. Feeder services:-

• Burnley - Colne - Nelson - Skipton - Keighley - Huddersfield - Halifax - Bradford - East Midlands Parkway
• Harrogate - York - Castleford - East Midlands Parkway
• Hull - Scunthorpe - East Midlands Parkway

Tickets and fares

Advertised fares start at £1, with a 50p booking fee using a yield management model with the lowest fares being offered to people who book early and on less popular journeys; typically it is only the first six seats are sold at £1. Services often use out-of-town coachway interchanges in order to reduce delays caused by serving interchanges in urban centres for intermediate stops.

Tickets must be purchased in advance via the megabus.com website or by telephone when passengers are given a reservation number which they show the driver when they board. The only services in which tickets can be bought on the vehicle are on a small number of Scottish services. Tickets can be paid for in pounds sterling or euro.

History

The first trial Megabus route was launched in August 2003 and the national network in March 2004.^[3]

In July 2004, the company acquired the Motorvator coach service brand, operating between Glasgow and Edinburgh.^[4]

In January 2005, the company announced that the service frequency of the X5 service between Oxford and Cambridge would double to every 30 minutes. A fleet of 15 refurbished vehicles were introduced at a cost of £1m. The company reported that passenger numbers had been growing at 7-8% per year and that 350,000 passengers were now using the service each year.^[5] The megabus network had carried 1.3 million passengers since it started. The company announced that it had placed an order for 25 new high-specification double-decker Neoplan coaches, each capable of carrying 95 passengers.^[6]

In June 2005, the company launched new routes serving Coventry and Stoke-on-Trent.^[7]

In August 2005, the company introduced a fleet of new double-decker coaches with air-conditioning, toilets and more comfortable seats at a cost of £6.5 million and announced that it had carried 2.6m passengers since startup.^[3]

In September 2005, ComfortDelGro (the owners of Scottish Citylink) and Stagecoach announced that they were entering into a joint venture to provide express coach services within Scotland^[8] effectively ending the competition on Megabus routes within Scotland. Under the terms of the agreement, Stagecoach would acquire 35% of Citylink, in return for certain rights to the Megabus brand in Scotland.^[4] Despite being a minority shareholder, Stagecoach has assumed operational control of Scottish Citylink, with Stagecoach staff taking management roles within the company and Stagecoach subsidiaries replacing subcontract operators on many routes. Some Citylink services have also been sacrificed in favour of the Megabus brand, where operations overlapped.

On 14 November 2005, the Megabus concept was extended to certain rail services, with the introduction of Megatrain between London Waterloo and Southampton Central, and London and Portsmouth and Southsea/Portsmouth Harbour, using a dedicated carriage on selected South West Trains services. This concept has since been extended to the Virgin Trains and East Midlands Trains franchises controlled by Stagecoach, with the latter replacing a Megabus line.

In March 2006, Megabus launched its first Megabus (North America) service.^[9] The Competition Commission started an investigation into the merger of Megabus and Scottish Citylink.

In October 2006, the company placed an order for 45 new 63-seat double-decker coaches which have a toilet and a lift for wheelchair passengers. The cost of the new vehicles was given as £11m. The chief-executive, Brian Souter claimed that “Bus and coach travel is the greener way to travel and far less damaging than airlines" highlighting the CO2 emissions for a London-Glasgow trip by megabus were 7 times lower than by easyjet.^[10]

In October 2006, the competition commission published its report on the merger with Scottish Citylink. They concluded the merger was anti-competitive on the "Saltire Cross" routes in Scotland and required the joint venture to sell certain services.^[11] Various services were subsequently sold to Parks of Hamilton, an unaffiliated operator, in early 2008.^[12]

During March 2009, a joint venture between Megabus and the Megatrain described above began under the name of Megabusplus. This involved connections from London to Yorkshire and vice versa by train travel from London to East Midlands Parkway railway station and then onward bus travel.

In May 2009, the company started services with the University of the West of England in Bristol from their Frenchay Campus.^[13]

in May 2011 Megabus expands UK budget travel network and offers Irish Ferries Boat Travel to and from Rosslare.

•A new twice daily service between Norwich and Thetford to London

•Improved frequency between Plymouth, Exeter and London

•A new service between London and Swansea and Pembroke Dock with through ferry fares to Rosslare in Ireland.

•A through ferry fare to Rosslare in Ireland also available from Bristol, Newport and Cardiff.

•New once daily connections from Carmarthen to Pembroke Dock (& Rosslare), Swansea, Cardiff, Newport, Bristol and London.

Additional journeys from Perth and Edinburgh to Newcastle, Sheffield and London

•An additional daily journey from Aberdeen to London

•A new link between Edinburgh and Leeds

Stop locations

Megabus serves many towns and cities. For service efficiency they sometimes use coachway interchanges rather than urban bus stations (for example using Meadowhall Interchange on the edge of the city rather than the more central Sheffield Interchange).

List of routes

All services are operated by Stagecoach Group subsidiaries unless otherwise noted. Accessible services are noted in the table. Services for special events (such as the British Grand Prix) are not included.

Fleet

The Megabus fleet is normally easily identifiable, with the megabus.com name on the front and sides in yellow against a blue base and the Megabus logo on the left side of the coach (facing forward) and rear of the bus.

Currently, accessible coaches are operated on Megabus routes between England and Wales, the M9 and M90 in Scotland, and the M20.

Vehicles are owned and maintained by various Stagecoach subsidiaries that lie within the route network. When branded vehicles are unavailable then other Stagecoach service vehicles can be used or coaches sub hired in with the case of Coaches from Coachmasters of Rochdale run on Manchester routes, Stagecoach service vehicles can range from standard double deck types such as the Volvo Olympian and Dennis Trident, through to Volvo B10M single deckers or even Dennis Dart SLF midibuses. Red Stagecoach London double deckers from Leyton were often seconded to Megabus motorway work until the sale of that company to Macquarie Bank.But when this is the case theres no on board tolets so rest stops are given on route.

Fleet history

Initially, most of the routes used buses designed for short local public transport journeys that had neither toilet nor luggage space, and each passenger was allowed only one bag.

Leyland Olympian 94-seat double decker tri-axle buses with toilets were used later on. These had been built for service with Hong Kong Citybus in 1990/1991, which Stagecoach purchased in 1999, but sold again in 2003. The vehicles were retained however, and were used on Megabus routes. A number of mid-life Volvo B10M coaches temporarily operated various routes, mainly in the South of England, until sufficient Olympians had been prepared for service. Gradually, most of these coaches were taken off Megabus work and used by Stagecoach elsewhere. However, the type made a reappearance at the end of 2005, when they became the mainstays on the services from London to Birmingham and London to Nottingham/Chesterfield.

Newer 'high-frills' bendy coaches, with both toilets and reclining seats, were used for the longer journeys between London and Scotland, but these were replaced early in 2005.

In Summer 2004, Stagecoach received a batch of Neoplan Skyliners for use on the Oxford Tube service. This displaced a number of 68 seat five-year-old double-deck Jonckheere-bodied MAN coaches, some of which went into service with Megabus on cross-border services and on services wholly within Scotland.

Stagecoach ordered another batch of Neoplan Skyliners in 2004, which went into service on Megabus in early 2005. These replaced the articulated coaches used on services between London and Scotland, and also Olympians on some of the other longer distance services.

In October 2006, Stagecoach announced an £11m order for 45 Volvo B12BT 15-metre coaches with Plaxton Panther coachwork for their UK Megabus operation. The tri-axle coaches were the longest rigid vehicles in the UK on their introduction to service in February 2007, and the first of their kind to be built in Britain. The 63-seat vehicles were fully accessible, with wheelchair lifts fitted.

In September 2009, Megabus took delivery of 4 brand new Van Hool Astromega double deck coaches which are currently used between London and Scotland, via Manchester ^[14]

See also

• Coach transport in the United Kingdom
• National Express Coaches
• Megabus (United States)
• Megatrain
• EasyBus

References

• BBC News Online article [1]
• BBC New Online article [2]

External links

• Megabus.com website
• Scottish Citylink website