New Enterprise Coaches is an English bus and coach company, based in Tonbridge, Kent. It is an arm of Arriva Southern Counties Ltd, itself a subsidiary of Deutsche Bahn of Germany.
Contents |
The company started in 1974 as a small West Kent-based family-run business.
In the early 1980s New Enterprise started running local bus services in the Tonbridge area, mainly competing against Maidstone & District, which eventually bought the company in June 1988. In 1997, British Bus - the company that owned Maidstone and District - was bought by Arriva.
Unlike many of Arriva's acquisitions which have adopted a corporate livery of all-over aquamarine with a champagne scoop at the front and yellow coachline along the skirt, New Enterprise retains its all-over white with red and blue ribbon livery on their coaches, and white, blue and red standard livery on their service buses. However, buses are sometimes seen in service in Arriva corporate livery prior to being repainted, or when they are on loan.
New Enterprise operated commuter services 781 and 784 to London from the Maidstone area out of Arriva's Maidstone Depot, which were inherited from Green Line in August 2005. However this service was withdrawn from 19 January 2009, replaced by an alternative service provided by Chalkwell Coaches of Sittingbourne.
From 18 March 2008, New Enterprise began to run the new EB3 easyBus service from Gatwick Airport to London Victoria, using a fleet of Mercedes-Benz Sprinter/Optare Soroco. A new outstation at Gatwick was opened for this operation. While the new vehicles are awaited, some older easyBus minibuses were on loan from Arriva Shires & Essex. Route EB3 was replaced by route EB4 (introduced in August 2008) from Gatwick Airport to Fulham Broadway in Central West London, with the EB3 eventually stopping on 21 September 2008. From early 2009, the Gatwick base was moved into Tellings-Golden Miller's (also owned by Arriva) Gatwick depot. The operation by New Enterprise was discontinued in late 2009, when Easybus took this and other similar sub-contracted routes 'in-house', from a base in London NW10.
New Enterprise now operates a number of local bus services in the Tonbridge and Sevenoaks areas under contract to Kent County Council from their Tonbridge base. They also offer a wide range of daybreaks and holidays from the Tonbridge and Maidstone areas, as well as coach hire with a choice of coaches from 49 to 53 seaters.
| Route Number | From | To | Notes | |
| 7 | Tonbridge | Hadlow | College Days only | |
| 200 | Hildenborough | Hildenborough Station | Monday to Friday peak hours | |
| 204 | Tonbridge | Underriver | Saturdays only | |
| 210 | Tonbridge | Charcott | Saturdays only | |
| 211 | Tonbridge Castle | Tonbridge Cottage Hospital. | ||
| 522 | Seal | Tonbridge | Schooldays only | |
| 532 | Kemsing | Tonbridge | Schooldays only | |
| 540 | Sundridge | Hugh Christie Tech. College | Schooldays only | |
| 541 | Larkfield | Hugh Christie Tech. College | Schooldays only | |
| 542 | Leybourne | Hugh Christie Tech. College | Schooldays only | |
| 543 | Chipstead Corner | Hugh Christie Tech. College | Schooldays only | |
| 544 | Sevenoaks | Hugh Cgristie Tech. College | Schooldays only | |
| 552 | Badgers Mount | Tonbridge | Schooldays only | |
| 572 | Hildenborough | Tonbridge | Schooldays only | |
| 577 | West Malling | Tonbridge, Weald of Kent School | Schooldays only |
|
||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||