GHA Group (Bryn Melyn, Vale Travel + Others)

[knutstransport]

RE: GHA Group (Bryn Melyn, Vale Travel + Others)

(05/03/2016 16:14)Valandil Wrote:  I remember my family boycotting Arriva when they were competing in the 'bus wars' of the 1990's with Warrington Borough Transport and, while I didn't understand why they were letting buses go past at the time (being quite young back then), it all makes sense now.

The bus actually wars pre-dated the formation of Arriva. North Western were still owned by British Bus at the time but later were taken over by Cowie Group who launched the Arriva name.

The Stagecoach bus wars were worse as they successfully tricked people in to thinking their buses either belonged to their rival or they were a new local bus company by trading under names similar to their rivals and not using Stagecoach branding. However, if the rival went out of business the new company started trading as Stagecoach.

It was sometimes hard to keep track of who operated bus services in the 90s. Starline Travel was actually two different companies one was Arrowline t/a Starline Travel owned by Simon Fawcett (who now owns Mistral) and the other was Ambassador Coaches t/a Starline Travel jointly owned by Arrowline and Bullocks. That meant when Fawcett sold his Arrowline to British Bus t/a North Western, the bus division went to North Western along with half of the coach division, while Bullocks took the other half of the coach division. However, North Western didn't want a coach division so sold their share of it to Selwyns. That meant 3 different companies took over former Starline Travel work. The former Starline depot in Knutsford closed with work transferred to both Winsford and Wythenshawe and North Western became Arriva. Arriva later took over Nova Scotia buses and decided to put Arriva branded buses on former Nova Scotia routes as soon as the takeover was completed, meaning the Nova Scotia ones appeared on other Arriva ones, including former Starline routes.