First Greater Manchester
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Alexander Dennis Enviro 400 on route 36
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| Parent | FirstGroup |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1996 |
| Headquarters | Oldham |
| Locale | North West England |
| Service area | Greater Manchester (some services overlap into other counties) |
| Service type | Bus services |
| Hubs |
Manchester Bolton Bury Oldham Rochdale Salford |
| Depots | 4 |
| Fleet | 687 (March 2016) |
| Website | www.firstgroup.com/manchester |
First Greater Manchester, is a bus operator in Greater Manchester. It is a subsidiary of FirstGroup.
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. 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).
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