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First Manchester,〔(Companies House extract company no 2818607 ) First Manchester Limited formerly Greater Manchester Buses North Limited〕 now trading as First Greater Manchester, is a bus operator in Greater Manchester. It is a subsidiary of FirstGroup. ==History== A timeline overview of public transport in Manchester, prior to 1993, is given here. Before deregulation in 1986, buses in the Greater Manchester area were publicly funded and went under the name of Greater Manchester Transport. In 1986 Greater Manchester Transport became known as GM Buses, which was owned by the metropolitan borough and city councils of Greater Manchester, but were at arms' length from the local town halls. In December 1993 GM Buses was split in two, GM Buses North〔 and GM Buses South.〔(Companies House extract company no 2818654 ) Greater Manchester Buses South Limited〕 It was planned that the two companies would compete against one another, but in reality they stuck to the sides of Manchester as indicated by their names. In April 1994 GM Buses North was sold to a management buyout. By this stage many competitors were operating GM Buses routes following deregulation. In March 1996 GM Buses North was sold to FirstBus and rebranded First Manchester. After a period of experimentation with the livery, an orange livery was adopted. First Manchester soon ended up managing two other FirstBus subsidiaries, First Potteries and First Pennine. That even included many GM Standard Leyland Atlanteans making their way to those two fleets. Eventually the First Pennine and Manchester subsidiaries were merged, adding a number of routes in the Tameside area to First Manchester. A new management team was put in place and First Manchester was relieved of its responsibility for the Potteries subsidiary. Various depots have been closed over the past 12 years including Atherton (1998), Bolton Crook Street (2004) (replaced by a new depot at Weston Street), Knowsley (2008), Rochdale (2004) and Trafford Park (2005) sites at Lowton, Bolton and Manchester Piccadilly have also been used temporarily for either acquired fleet (Lowton/Bolton) in 1998 or for the Commonwealth Games in 2002 (Manchester Piccadilly). As of September 2010 First Manchester has taken over the management of the Cheshire and Merseyside depots of First Potteries with the Staffordshire depots transferring to the management of the new First Midlands division. The Cheshire and Merseyside depots fell to a First Manchester license. In February 2012, the company came under fire from Department for Transport North West's traffic commissioner after a performance survey found an average of 26% of First Manchester services were not running on time. The company were fined £285,000 in March 2012 for their poor reliability. In Spring 2012 First Manchester was rebranded as First Greater Manchester. In June 2012, it was announced that FirstGroup were looking at selling off some of its operations, which included First Manchester's Wigan depot. On 2 December 2012, Stagecoach Manchester purchased the Wigan operation.〔(Stagecoach buys FirstGroup's Wigan bus arm for £12 million ) ''BBC News'' 31 October 2012〕〔(Acquisition of Wigan Bus Operations from First Manchester ) Stagecoach 31 October 2012〕 The transaction saw 300 employees, 120 vehicles (although 20 were owned by Transport for Greater Manchester) and the Wigan depot purchased by the former A Mayne & Son legal entity.〔(Companies House extract company no 308157 ) Greater Manchester Buses West Limited formerly A Mayne & Son Limited〕 On 1 August 2013, FirstGroup announced that subject to regulatory approval by the Office of Fair Trading, it had agreed to purchase the bus operations of south Manchester based company Finglands Coachways.〔(Companies House extract company no 243051 ) Finglands Coachways Limited〕 The purchase included the lease of Finglands's depot in Rusholme, South Manchester routes and approximately 100 members of staff, but no buses.〔(Jobs saved as famous bus firm gears up for takeover ) ''Manchester Evening News'' 2 August 2013〕 The deal was approved on 27 January 2014 with First taking over Finglands services on 9 February 2014. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「First Greater Manchester」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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