Badgerline

Badgerline Group plc

Preserved Bristol VR in May 2011
Founded	April 1985
Ceased operation	16 June 1995
Headquarters	Weston-super-Mare
Service area	England Wales
Service type	Bus operator
Fleet	4,000 (June 1995)
Operator	Badgerline Buses City Line Eastern National Frontline Enterprises Midland Red West Potteries Motor Traction South Wales Transport Thamesway Buses Wessex Coaches Western National Yorkshire Rider

Badgerline was a bus operator in and around Bristol from 1985 until 2003. Its headquarters were in Weston-super-Mare. Initially a part of the Bristol Omnibus Company, it was privatised in September 1986 being sold to Badgerline Holdings in a management buyout. It went on to purchase a number of bus companies in England and Wales. In November 1993, Badgerline Group was listed on the stock exchange, and on 16 June 1995 merged with the GRT Group to form FirstBus.

The Bristol Tramways Company started operating buses in 1906 to feed traffic into their tram services from beyond the boundaries of the city of Bristol. In 1910 a branch was opened in Weston-super-Mare where the company's first bus station was opened on the sea front in the 1930s. Others were built after World War II at Wells, Bath and Bristol. The company changed its name to the Bristol Omnibus Company in 1957 as it no longer operated trams, but by then it was owned by the British Transport Commission and so became a subsidiary of the National Bus Company (NBC) on 1 January 1969. In the 1980s the NBC split its subsidiaries into smaller operating units. Bristol Omnibus established a separate operating unit for its services outside Bristol in September 1983 and then introduced three distinct brands in April 1985, with operations in Somerset and the Avon outside the city of Bristol becoming Badgerline. This name was then established as a company in its own right which was sold to a group of its managers and staff on 23 September 1986. This was the second bus-operating NBC subsidiary to be sold.

On 31 May 1985 46 Ford Transit minibuses replaced 18 full-size buses at Weston-super-Mare, the first English town network to be totally converted to minibus operation. Most routes operated at a 10-minute headway during the daytime, with routes combining to give 5-minute headways through the town centre. Headways reduced to 20 minutes in the evening and on Sundays. Full-size vehicles were retained in the town for longer distance services. The town's bus station was closed in 1987 when maintenance facilities were transferred to a new depot in Warne Road.