Different companies, same service |
Please
note: I
won't be showing any political bias here as this article is solely for informational purposes only.
Back in early 2015, I
wrote an article about the private companies contracted to TFL; in this
article I will be explaining about the operational
share of the London bus market based by share from European, International
and British companies.
I'll start with the
British companies as they are the largest with 39.77% of the operating share.
Who are the British
owned companies that operate London Bus services? They are CT Plus, Go Ahead Group,
Stagecoach Group, Sullivan Buses and Uno (University Bus Ltd.)
Company
|
Percentage
of share
|
CT
Plus
|
1.00%
|
Go
Ahead Group
|
24.90%
|
Stagecoach
|
13.54%
|
Sullivan
Buses
|
0.29%
|
Uno
|
0.04%
|
I would like to
highlight that CT Plus is a Social
Enterprise which means they invest their profits back to the organisation;
they can be structured as a for profit
and non profit company. CT Plus
operates from Ash Grove (HK) garage with Arriva London (AE) and is owned by HCT
Group who also operate bus services in various parts of England. HCT Group are
also contracted to operate public bus services in the Crown Dependencies of Guernsey and Jersey.
Sullivan Buses is a
local bus company based in South Mimms, Hertfordshire. They operate 1 London
bus route and 7 school routes, contracted by TFL. They also operate several bus routes in the Hertford area.
Uno (University Bus
Limited) is owned by the University of Hertfordshire and as well as operating 1
London Bus route they operate over 40 bus routes in Hertfordshire.
Go Ahead Group and
Stagecoach Group are public limited companies as they are in the FTSE
250. They are also the largest bus operators in Britain.
European companies
operate 37.12% of the London Bus
market.
Company
|
Percentage
of share
|
Abellio
|
8.32%
|
Arriva
|
17.43%
|
RATP
Dev
|
11.37%
|
Abellio operates bus
services in London and Surrey, they also operate Greater Anglia and the
ScotRail franchise. Abellio is owned by Nederlandse
Spoorwegen who in-turn are owned by
the Netherlands Government.
Arriva operate bus
services in London and are one of the largest bus operators in Britain. They
also operate the railway franchises of Chiltern
Railways, New CrossCountry, Northern and Wales & Borders. On November 13th 2016, they will be fully operating the
concession of the London Overground service. They also operate the open access
railway service Grand Central and Tyne & Wear Metro. Arriva is owned
by Deutsche Bahn which is owned by the
German Government.
RATP
Dev own London United, London Sovereign and Quality Line/Epsom Buses, these
companies operate London Bus routes under contract to TfL.
They also own Bath Bus Company, Yellow Bus Company and The Original Tour. RATP
Dev is owned by RATP Group which again is a state owned company in France as they are also responsible for
transport services in Paris. RATP stands for Régie Autonome des Transports Parisiens which means Autonomous
Operator of Parisian Transports in English.
I find it extremely interesting
how the bus companies contracted to TFL are owned by state-owned governments in Europe.
The internationally
owned bus companies operate 22.74%
of the London Bus market.
ComfortDelGro owns
Metroline, a former London Buses subsidiary company. During June 2013, First
London (Formerly London Buses Centrewest) sold nearly all of their operations
to Metroline and the remainder to Tower Transit and Go Ahead London.
ComfortDelGro is a subsidiary of SBS Transit, one of the major bus operators in
Singapore.
Tower Transit is owned
by Transit Systems and is based in Australia. Tower Transit took over First
London's Atlas Road (Park Royal), Lea Interchange (Leyton) and Westbourne Park
garages with 24 London bus routes and 412 buses back in June 2013. Transit
Systems also owns Go Whippet, a bus company based in Cambridgeshire.
London
Bus operations were privatised completely during the mid 1990's under
competitive tender. It's interesting how these companies are taken over by international
companies and public bodies in various European countries.
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which is @CLondoner92
Reference:
Image attribution
By Au Morandarte from Chiswick/Romford, London, England - Stagecoach 17941 (115), Go-Ahead WVL94 (541)Uploaded by Ultra7, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=30846383