From 'pirate' bus firms to bus 'wars' - it's a tale of twists and turns almost 200 years old
Sunday marked a new dawn in the history of bus services in Greater Manchester - another chapter in a story dating back almost 200 years to 1824.
Private operators now have no say over routes, fares, frequencies, timetables and overall standards, giving power back to the paying public and paving the way for the Bee Network - a vision of integrated bus, tram and eventually train travel in the city region. Blessed with an entrepreneurial spirit, Greenwood, from Pendleton in Salford, built the Manchester to Bolton toll road and became what was then known as a 'toll keeper'.
Other bus proprietors sprang up in the wake of his success, but Greenwood's Manchester Carriage Company operated horse-bus services across much of Manchester and its surrounding towns. Greater Manchester became a thriving hub of competition into the Victorian era, when there was unfettered freedom for competition.Then in the 1870s, came tramways, powered by horses, and in turn the Tramways Act of the same year.
In the Edwardian era, all local authorities had taken over their local tramways, using compulsory purchase powers. In this city, for example, there was Manchester Corporation Tramways, and each authority had a similarly-labelled fleet. So a number of private bus operators cropped up, in competition with the council-run services. Some went bust and dropped out, others grew and became well established.Because of their dodgy tactics, these maverick firms were known as 'pirates' - and there were stories about their antics in the Manchester Evening News.
Rival companies would often object to these applications, saying, for example a route was not needed or a railway line could serve passengers in the area. Oldham had a fleet of crimson and white buses and, like most services, used numbers to differentiate its routes. Just up the road in Rochdale, where the fleet was kept in the town depot, each vehicle was decorated with the municipal crest.
This wasn’t about a change to regulation, this was about modifying the structure of how the buses were run. Orange had never been used before, it was bright, modern and perfect for the ‘white heat of technology’ age of 1969. Of all those swept away by the 1930s Transport Act, one survived. Arthur Mayne & Son was based in Clayton on Ashton New Road and, against all the odds, he kept his route and became the only independent firm in Greater Manchester.
GMT became GM Buses North and GM Buses South, jointly owned by the 10 metropolitan councils of Greater Manchester. They ran 2,000 buses. Their liveries were repainted. The southern buses were orange and pink and the northern fleet were a chocolate brown.
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