Chester City Transport / ChesterBus

[90sWereBetter]

Does anyone have any memories or insight into the final days of this municipal, because their demise seems to be among the more sadder cases in UK transport history. A once-thriving municipal reduced to running superannuated buses and eventually being bullied out of existence by Arriva and First by the summer of 2007 (of course, this being Lockhead-era First, they somehow made things worse when they took over the routes).

From memory, their only low-floor vehicles were two small batches of Darts and Scanias, both of which were dedicated to Park and Ride services. Their newest decker dated from 1988, and they appear to have been one of the last major fleets in the UK running Leyland Fleetlines and Dennis Dominators, which while amazing for the enthusiast, unfortunately shows the sheer lack of investment in the fleet. It also seems their last throw of the dice was to rebrand as ChesterBus and introduce the cream/blue livery. Smart it may have been, but it did not change the fundamentals in any way.

 

[Leedsbusman]

Does anyone have any memories or insight into the final days of this municipal, because their demise seems to be among the more sadder cases in UK transport history. A once-thriving municipal reduced to running superannuated buses and eventually being bullied out of existence by Arriva and First by the summer of 2007 (of course, this being Lockhead-era First, they somehow made things worse when they took over the routes).

From memory, their only low-floor vehicles were two small batches of Darts and Scanias, both of which were dedicated to Park and Ride services. Their newest decker dated from 1988, and they appear to have been one of the last major fleets in the UK running Leyland Fleetlines and Dennis Dominators, which while amazing for the enthusiast, unfortunately shows the sheer lack of investment in the fleet. It also seems their last throw of the dice was to rebrand as ChesterBus and introduce the cream/blue livery. Smart it may have been, but it did not change the fundamentals in any way.

Were they bullied out of existence by First? I thought First bought them through formal sale process and still traded under the Chester City Transport Ltd legal entity until they divested the operation to Stagecoach.

Arriva, having been excluded from the sale tender in 2006 expanded into the City in response. Some interesting background here

https://www.monckton.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/ArrivaJune07FB.pdf

And https://www.keybuses.com/article/crosville-and-chester-city-transport

 

[90sWereBetter]

Were they bullied out of existence by First? It though First bought them through formal sale process and still traded under the Chester City Transport Ltd legal entity until they divested the operation to Stagecoach.

Let me have this one please

I know Arriva registered an entire set of competing services in early 2007, which felt a bit like Darlington 1994 all over. I'm not sure how that was resolved but it certainly was the beginning of the end for ChesterBus.

 

[Leedsbusman]

Let me have this one please

I know Arriva registered an entire set of competing services in early 2007, which felt a bit like Darlington 1994 all over. I'm not sure how that was resolved but it certainly was the beginning of the end for ChesterBus.

Indeed - I was questioning how First could be considered the ‘bully’. They could have done what Arriva tried to do but actually followed the sale process fully.

 

[Roilshead]

Perhaps the answer can be found in Michael Yelton's Venture Publications "Super Prestige" volume (number 44 in the series) about the operator - Chester, (May 2023).

 

[JKP]

To be honest, I think that Chester always struggled as an operator. When I lived there in 1978 to 1979 there was still a large amount of all day crew operation with half cab Guy double decks but also with newer Daimler Fleetlines. Furthermore, I think the Corporation suffered from having a number of short routes which did not produce large numbers of passengers. Crosville ran a large number of city services especially out to the Hoole and Upton Park areas and I think that even Saltney was joint operation with Chester.

 

[TheGrandWazoo]

Think @90sWereBetter should concede that, in this instance, First weren't the bully nor did anything wrong in terms of the purchase.

Fact was that CCT was a relatively small operator that really hadn't managed to fully embrace the deregulated world and was extremely vulnerable. Investment in new fleet had dried up by the early/mid 1990s. After that, there were few new vehicles except for park and ride, and even some of those were BMC Falcons!

CCT was losing money and the council weren't prepared to keep supporting it. They went to sell, and Arriva tried to subvert the process.

As an aside, there was mention of Darlington. Stuart Hyslop, MD of Chesterbus, was also the MD of Darlington Transport when they went pop

 

[90sWereBetter]

Think @90sWereBetter should concede that, in this instance, First weren't the bully nor did anything wrong in terms of the purchase.

I know, but I wanted to have a pop at the big groups, even if it was on spurious grounds. If we can't do that then we've lost our way as a forum.

Back to the topic in hand, was there any significant competition between Chester and Crosville/PMT/First?

 

[Roilshead]

I know, but I wanted to have a pop at the big groups, even if it was on spurious grounds. If we can't do that then we've lost our way as a forum.

So the purpose of this forum, rather than to discuss things factually and objectively, is to "take a pop" at whatever any of us don't like for whatever reason and use whatever spurious grounds we can contrive to do that? I would have thought that removed any value at all from the forum.

 

[PaulWC]

I know Crosville Wales diverted some of their Deeside services through Blacon but the only major outbreak of competition was around 1996 when St Helens based South Lancs Transport started high frequency minibus services on several Chester City routes. It didn't last very long and they were soon seen off. It was the end of that bit of competition which saw Crosville take over the Saltney 16 service from Chester City.

From memory, I don't recall Crosville or First ever competing directly with Chester City.