| Slogan | "Providing dependable, friendly bus services whilst actively improving air quality". |
|---|---|
| Parent | Ventura Motors |
| Founded | 1924 by Harry Cornwall |
| Service area | West, North-West, North-East, East and South Eastern Melbourne |
| Service type | Bus & coach |
| Routes | 32 |
| Hubs | Chadstone SC, Deakin University, Eastland SC, Forest Chase SC, Knox City SC, Monash University, Southland SC |
| Stations | Box Hill, Bentleigh, Blackburn, Clayton, Glen Waverley, Mentone, Middle Brighton, Mitcham, Mordialloc, Mount Waverley, Oakleigh |
| Depot(s) | South Oakleigh and Knoxfield |
| Chief executive | Andrew Cornwall |
| Web site | http://www.venturabus.com.au/ |
Ventura is a privately owned bus and coach operator in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Today the largest private Melbourne bus company,[1] and operates a number of bus routes under contract from the Victorian State Government. The company purchased National Bus Company (the Melbourne bus operation of the National Express Group) for A$45 million, and the Mount Dandy Bus for A$6 million.[2] It also operates EastCoast, a business which services Scania buses and trucks and ZF transmissions.[1]
Routes operated by Ventura are predominantly located in Melbourne's eastern and northern suburbs. Ventura buses feature a distinct light-blue livery, with a navy-blue stripe running horizontally across the sides of the bus, and Ventura's logo in yellow. New National buses also use this livery.
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Ventura was founded in 1924 by a war veteran named Harry Cornwall. Cornwall had been an employee of Track & Kintrack, an operator based in St Kilda, but decided to form his own bus company when his employer refused to let him run a bus service along dirt roads through what was then Melbourne's outer east.[1] Cornwall began operating a bus route between Box Hill and the city, and later running buses along dirt tracks between Box Hill and Mentone, which roughly equates to the eastern section of bus route 903. Its first depot was the petrol station on the corner of Station Street and Canterbury Road, in Box Hill South.
Between 1952 and 1969, Ventura purchased Clarinda Transport, High Street Road Bus Service and Knibbs Bus Service. It also added a service between Blackburn and Clayton (roughly equivalent to the current 703 service), added Waverley and East Burwood services, and (in 1957) opened its Oakleigh South depot at the corner of Centre and Warrigal Roads. Also during this time-frame, Ventura closed its Box Hill South depot and replaced it with a new depot at Mahoney's Road, East Burwood.
In 1966 purchased several bus routes around Mitcham from C Young. In 1970 Boronia Bus Lines was acquired; the two purchases added 12 route services to the company. In 1987, Ventura acquired Bentleigh Bus Lines, Rennies Bus Services, Willis Bus Services and Hawthorn Bus Services. As a result of these purchases, it sold its East Burwood depot and replaced it with its Knoxfield depot.
In 1988, the then Metropolitan Transit Authority called for tenders on all of Melbourne's bus routes. Prior to the completion of tenders, Met employees reportedly told the Driver Group (then operating under the Waverley Transit brand) 'not to bother' entering tenders for some of their existing routes. At the completion of the tender process, 7 bus routes previously operated by Ventura, and 3 previously operated by Waverley Transit were tendered out to a company called Quince's, which had 60 buses used mostly for charter and school services.
In the case Waverley Transit V Metropolitan Transit Authority, Waverley Transit launched a Supreme Court challenge to the results of the tendering process. The verdict deemed that the State Government had acted inappropriately during the tendering process, and as the contract between the State Government and Quince's was illegal, thus restored the bus routes to Ventura and Waverley Transit. In the wake of this verdict, the Met launched an appeal, with Waverley Transit launching a counter-appeal; the cases lasted into the early 1990s. The final verdict of these cases pointed out that the licenses to operate bus routes, as well as the bus routes themselves, were legally the property of the respective bus companies and not the State Government.
In spite of this, Quince received the rights to operate a number of new cross-suburban bus routes cutting across a number of bus operator territories, including a route from Brighton to Lilydale.
In 1998, Quince's lost their bus routes. Ironically, Quince's long cross-suburban bus routes were broken up, with sections divided between Ventura and Driver (for instance, the Monash University - Brighton leg of one Quince's route became part of Ventura route 703, the Glen Waverley - Mitcham section became part of Ventura route 736).
In 1999, the Minister for Transport, Peter Batchelor, released a Press Release congratulating Ventura on having provided 75 years of service. At the time of the press release, Ventura was already Victoria's 3rd largest bus company.[3] In 2000, the company introduced the first Australian buses to run on ethanol fuel,[4] with the first ethanol powered city buses delivered in 2002.[5]
In 2000, Ventura purchased Mount Dandy Bus. In 2004, it purchased the National Bus Company from the National Express Group for A$45 million, becoming the largest private bus operator in Melbourne with the acquisition of their 268 buses, 44 public bus routes and 70 school bus routes.[1] While the company has announced that it will continue to use the National Bus Company brand until bus contracts come under re-tender in 2009, new National Buses are painted in the Ventura livery. Through National Express, Ventura purchased what remains of the old government fleet, which is often of particular interest to bunzels, though this section of the fleet will be phased out over the coming years.
On the 5th of August 2002, the Victorian State Government introduced the first SmartBus service (as a trial project) run by Ventura that replaced the old timetable of the 703 Middle Brighton Railway Station - Blackburn Railway Station with a new, high frequency SmartBus service on route 703 that offers:
The other route which was introduced on the same day were the combined 888/889 route service operated by Grenda Bus Services on Springvale Road from Nunawading Railway Station to Chelsea Railway Station.
Due to the success of the initial SmartBus trial (patronage increased by up to 25%), the Victorian State Government had introduced another SmartBus service that Ventura operated, the former route 700 from Box Hill Station to Mordialloc Station via Warrigal Road. This was later upgraded to the Red Orbital, 903 service from Altona Station to Mordialloc Railway Station though Sunshine, Essendon, Preston, Heidelberg, Doncaster, Chadstone and Warrigal Road. This was implemented on 20 April 2009, in which this service improvement was delivered after a delay of a few years.
On the 1st of December 2009, Ventura acquired US Bus Lines, operating route services in the outer east region. On 1 July 2010, Ventura acquired Ivanhoe Bus Company, operating in the north and north east region.
Ventura bought many Leyland buses between the 1950s and the 1980s. These were Leyland Leopards and Royal Tiger Cubs, then later on the company purchased many Leyland Tigers. . Ventura also purchased a substantial number of ex-Adelaide Leyland Worldmasters.
The purchases of Bentleigh Bus Lines/Hawthorn Bus Service saw the fleet expand further. Many non-Leyland buses joined the fleet including Mercedes-Benz, PMC Elwoods, Volvo B10M's, Leyland Leopards, Isuzu ECR and Bedfords. Most of these buses were sold off by the early 1990s but the Elwoods survived in the fleet until 2001 (although a small number were sold off in 1993) and the B10M's remain in the fleet to this day.
Ventura purchased a batch of 10 Mercedes-Benz O305's from the STA in Sydney in 1991. These were withdrawn between 1999 and 2001.
When Ventura needed some new buses in 1992, Leyland had stopped producing chassis. Finding another supplier, Ventura purchased two Scania L113's and a Volvo B10M with Volgren bodies for evaluation. They decided to purchase more Scanias after the evaluation period. Scania has since been the main chassis used in the Ventura fleet.[6] L113 chassis were bought in high and low floor format with both Volgren (delivered from 1992–98) and North Coast bodies (1998–99) and L94UBs with North Coast and Custom Coaches bodies entered the fleet between 1999 and 2006.
Ventura purchased a pair of Mercedes-Benz O500 chassis with North Coast bodies in 2003 for evaluation.
There is also a batch of Designline MAN's delivered to South Oakleigh depot by end of December 2006, and have been in service since 2 January 2007. 4 of them are in blue Ventura livery and the rest wear a SmartBus livery, similar to that adorning the Grendas and Eastrans Smartbuses used on Route 900. Subsequently all if this batch were repainted in Smartbus Livery. Another batch of these buses arrived late in 2007, these were all in Ventura's standard livery at first, but all but 4 were repainted into Smartbus livery when the 903 Smartbus service started. Leyland Tigers were all but retired from late 2007, although there are still a small number of them in the fleet as school and local charter buses.
Also late in 2007, a batch of new Scania K230UB's were delivered and allocated to the Doncaster (NationalBus) depot. These are the first K230UB's for the Ventura group. 2008 sees another batch of Designline MANS. now based on the 16.240 chassis. This new batch has a very distinctive body design, similar to the trolley buses operating in New Zealand, where these Designline buses are built, there will be a large batch of these, plus another batch of Scania K230UB's with Custom Coaches bodies. Deliveries of the distinctive Designline MAN's continued into 2009, with the last of these entering service in September 2009. After this more Scania/Custom CB60 EvoII units were delivered throughout 2010, mainly to the National bus section of the fleet, but two of these went to the Oakleigh depot and one to Croydon, these units are similar to the earlier K230UB units previously delivered in 2007-08, but with small changes such as a darker tint on the windows. Ventura placed an order with Designline for more units, this time based on Scania K230UB chassis, but this order was cancelled when an earthquake in 2010 caused severe damage to the Designline factory, therefore halting production, this order was transferred to Custom Coaches and these units were delivered in the first half of 2011.
In 2011, Ventura entered into a contract with Volgren for 38 new buses, this time based on Scania K280UB chassis as the K230UB is no longer available. This is the first time since 1997/98 Ventura have purchased buses with Volgren bodywork. These will be delivered from late 2011 and will replace the earlier 1992-94 Volgren bodied Volvo B10M MkIII and Scania L113CRB units from regular route service,these will move into the school/rail bus/local charter section of the fleet. The 23 year old ex Quince's 0405's, the 25 year old ex Rennie Volvo B10M MkII's and the remaining Leyland Tigers will be sold off.
Current suburban routes include:[2]
Former Depots:
Current Depots:[2]
Brands operated by Ventura Motors include:
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