Bidding for franchise
In February 1998,the government announced the franchise for all 140 routes operated by CMB would not be reviewed when it expired 31 August that year. Eighty-eight of the routes were placed to open tender,12 routes were transferred directly to Citybus,one cross-harbour route to Kowloon Motor Bus,and the remaining routes were cancelled. [2] [3]
Six companies lodged bids: [4] [5]
NWS Holdings was considered a dark horse as it was the only bidder with no local bus operation experience. However,NWS Holdings was awarded a replacement franchise in March 1998 with commitments of new facilities,improved service standards and employment of CMB staff. During the handover in mid-1998,NWFB faced a lot of difficulties since CMB was reluctant to cooperate. NWFB commenced operating at midnight on 1 September 1998 after a series of negotiations and with help from the government. However NWFB had already started its operation of other non-overnight routes at midnight as CMB refused to operate after that time. [6] [7]
Start of operations
NWFB took over 88 bus routes on 1 September 1998,with the fleet mostly were 710 step-entrance buses. In order to compete with Citybus and KMB,NWFB has purchased 500 new low-floor buses,out of which 76 are Dennis Dart SLF and the remaining are either Dennis Tridents or Volvo B10TLs and 50 buses commenced operations immediately. Step-entrance buses had the NWFB logo applied over the CMB logos and blue patches over the CMB corporate flag,before repainting it to NWFB livery,and upgraded the floor,handrails,lighting system and seating layout. The seating layout was changed from 3+2 to 2+2,making a typical refurbished bus accommodate 10 fewer passengers than one before refurbishment. [7]
As for the older buses from CMB,they were all gradually phased out by January 2016,becoming full low-floor fleet except for two Dennis Condors (DM18 and DM22) and two Volvo Olympians (VA51 and VA54) which were transferred to Citybus before retirement. After the phasing out of all older buses from CMB,NWFB also began retirement of the first-generation low-floor fleet,and 1220 was even transferred to Citybus before retirement in 13 December 2020. Before the merger in July 2023,NWFB only focuses on second-generation low-floor fleet (e.g. Enviro500 and B9TLs).
In May 2000 FirstGroup sold its shares to joint venture partner New World Development giving it 100% ownership. [8]
In June 2003 fellow franchised bus operator Citybus was purchased by NWFB parent company NWS Holdings,bringing the bus services of Hong Kong Island once again under control of a single organisation. Before the acquisition,many of the two companies' competing routes overlap each other. In order to make better use of company resources,many routes were reshuffled. Redundant routes were cancelled,and Octopus card bus-bus interchange discounts were introduced between routes of both companies. [8]
In January 2004 NWFB took a 51% shareholding in Kunming New World First Bus,a joint venture established with the Kunming government to operate services to Kunming in Yunnan on 39 routes with 700 buses. [8]
Retirement of brand
In August 2020,along with Citybus,NWFB was sold to the Bravo Transport consortium,made up of private equity firm Templewater Bravo,Hong Kong-listed investment holding company Hans Energy and Ascendal Group. [9] [10] [11] [12]
In July 2022,Bravo Transport announced that it would be retiring the NWFB brand,with operations merged into Citybus when the next franchise commenced on 1 July 2023. [13] [14] In July 2023,the brand was retired. [15]
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