Tide (transportation company)

Tide ASA

Type	Allmennaksjeselskap
Traded as	:
Industry	Transport
Founded	2006
Headquarters	Bergen, Norway
Area served	Norway
Services	Bus transport Car ferry transport Fast passenger craft
Revenue	NOK 2 billion (2005)
Number of employees	3,000 (2007)
Website	www.tide.no

Tide ASA is a public transport company in Hordaland, Norway which resulted from the merger of Gaia Trafikk and Hardanger Sunnhordlandske Dampskipsselskap (HSD). The company provides the public transit network in the city of Bergen, and most of the bus service in Hordaland on contract with Skyss. Tide also runs the buses in northern Rogaland on contract with Kolumbus.

The group has two daughter companies, Tide Buss AS that operates the scheduled busses, and the leiseure travel company Tide Reiser AS that also operates express, airport and charter buses and chartered ferries and fast passenger craft. The largest owners are Det Stavangerske Dampskibsselskap (75%) and Sparebanken Vest (10%). The company is listed on the with head offices in Bergen.

Formerly, Tide operated the passenger- and car ferry routes previously operated by HSD and Stavangerske, with the daughter company Tide Sjø.

At the time of the merger, Tide had a total of

The company has about 3000 employees. The total value of the company was estimated at NOK 800 million. The company has 39 million passengers per year, of which 25 million are in Bergen. The company operates the only trolleybus service in Norway, Line 2 in Bergen, with eight trolleybuses. Another trolleybus service in Scandinavia runs in Landskrona, Sweden.

Plans for mergers and takeovers in Hordaland's public transport business came forth in September 2005 when Connex Norge reported interest in purchasing Gaia. On November 8 Gaia and HSD suggested a merger between the two companies instead, but the city cabinet leader of Bergen, Monica Mæland and the mayor of Os opposed the idea. The employees of both companies openly supported the idea in June 2006. Two other companies, Arriva and Nettbuss, a subsidiary the Norwegian State Railways also showed interest in a takeover.