JP Travel

JPT Bus Company

Northern Counties Palatine bodied Volvo Olympian in February 2012
Parent	Mark Walsh
Founded	1974
Defunct	25 April 2014
Headquarters	Middleton
Locale	North West England
Service area	Greater Manchester
Service type	Bus services
Routes	21 (April 2013)
Destinations	Altrincham Ashton-under-Lyne Hyde Manchester Middleton Oldham Rochdale Stalybridge Stretford
Fleet	42 (February 2014)

JPT Bus Company (formerly JP Travel), was a bus company based at Middleton, Greater Manchester, England. Operations ceased on 25 April 2014, with the business taken over by Stagecoach Manchester.

The company was founded in 1974 by Janet and Peter Walsh, entering the bus market in 1987. A small network of services began to form during the late 1980s under the name of "City Nippy", with the following routes being introduced within 12 months of commencing bus operations:

Since then, a network of services has developed across Manchester. Whilst concentrating on north Manchester, the company has gained a presence in the southern area through winning Transport for Greater Manchester tenders. In the past few years, expansion through this means has taken as far as Farnworth and Stockport.

An attempt to reroute service 162 to bypass North Manchester General Hospital met opposition from residents in the Alkrington area. The decision was reversed and the route was instead diverted to serve more of the Alkrington estate.

In 2007, they took over the services then operated by Ashall's Coaches and have since taken over the routes of the former operator, Vale Of Manchester.

Another innovation occurred in 2009, when the operator became the first on route 343, between Oldham, Mossley and Hyde, to operate low floor buses. As part of a summer promotion, in August 2009 the company halved the cost of its weekly season ticket from £10.00 to £5.00, at a time when competing major operators were cutting back on services.

In October 2009 the company was awarded the contracts for five new services in North Manchester and received a loan of £250,000 to buy new low-floor vehicles for the routes.

In 2010 Janet and Peter Walsh retired with control of the business passing to son Mark.

In January 2011, JP Travel announced that its sister company Eurobus had acquired local coach firm known as Ellenbrook Travel. Eurobus began operating on route 17 on 15 May 2011, effectively competing against First Greater Manchester on that route. Five former Stagecoach Alexander ALX200 bodied Volvo B6LEs were used, running alongside JPT on a co-ordinated timetable. The Eurobus vehicles shared the same colour scheme (except for the Eurobus logo) as JPT. In late 2012 the Eurobus operation was wound up, with all vehicles being rebranded as JPT buses, and gaining JPT fleet numbers.