Stagecoach Highlands is a division of the Stagecoach Group operating within the Scottish Highlands as well as on the Orkney Islands and Isle of Skye. The company is based in Inverness and covers most of the former Rapson Group bus and coach operations, which were taken over by Stagecoach in May 2008.
The Rapsons Group was Scotland's largest independent operator, formed as a group of companies serving the Highlands & Islands and based from its headquarters at Seafield Road, Inverness. The company traded as Rapsons Coaches, Highland Country Buses, Orkney & Causeway Coaches and also operated on long-distance Scottish Citylink and National Express contracts. Rapsons operated over 250 vehicles with around 400 employees based at depots in Inverness, Aviemore, Fort William, Portree, Wick, Thurso & Kirkwall. While regular bus services traded as Highland Country, longer distance, express and private contract work operated under the Rapsons name.
Rapsons were founded in 1945 but came further into business between the 1970s to 1980s. In August 1991, Highland Scottish was sold to a consortium made up of Rapsons Coaches and Clansman Travel and Leisure, the holding company for Scottish Citylink, which had recently been purchased from the Scottish Bus Group through a management and employee buyout, for £800,000.[1][2] In March 1993, ownership of Highland Scottish passed wholly to Rapsons.[3]
Prior to Highland Scottish's sale, the company initially maintained a monopoly over bus services in Inverness, operating minibuses in competition with Inverness Traction, a company formed by former Highland employees in 1988.[4] Inverness Traction entered receivership in April 1989,[5] but were subsequently purchased by Alexander (North East), who too collapsed in November 1989 due to unpaid debts.[6] The assets and services of Inverness Traction were purchased by Stagecoach Holdings,[7] who by 1991, were engaged in a bus war with Highland that saw a large number of Highland drivers defect to Stagecoach after they received a pay cut.[8] Highland would soon scale down the level of competition against Stagecoach, and soon after, Stagecoach would purchase the Inverness and Tain operations of Highland Scottish and become the dominant operator of Inverness area bus services.[citation needed]
In October 1995, Highland Scottish was split in two, with Rapsons retaining the eastern services[specify] under Highland Bus & Coach Ltd while the remainder passed to a new company, Highland Country Buses Ltd, which was bought by National Express for £1.8million. The two companies continued to exist under separate ownership until August 1998, when Rapsons bought Highland Country Buses back from National Express for £4million.[9]
In 1999, Rapsons began to expand into the Orkney Islands with the acquisition of four separate bus companies, including the two largest, James D. Peace and Shalder Coaches. The acquisition of Shalder Coaches also allowed Rapsons to expand into Shetland, with the company trading as Shetland Coaches from a depot at Lower Scord, Scalloway.[10] Rapsons pulled out of Shetland in 2003 after they lost all service contracts when going for an increase in rates,[clarification needed] while Rapsons' Orkney operations would be rebranded Orkney Coaches in April 2005, with Orkney Coaches operated as a separate subsidiary of Highland Country.[11]
In March 2006, Rapsons gave up most of their long-distance coach contracts with Scottish Citylink and National Express. Later in November, around 200 Rapsons workers affiliated with the Transport and General Workers' Union planned a series of 24-hour strikes in a pay dispute, with union officials wanting driver's pay equal to their Stagecoach competitors at £8 an hour.[12] The strikes were prevented when workers were offered and later accepted an improved pay offer from Rapsons' management.[13][14]
On 16 May 2008, it was announced that the Stagecoach Group would purchase the operations of Rapsons, including Highland Country Buses and Orkney Coaches Ltd, consolidating the group's position in the north of Scotland. The sale was completed in June 2008, adding over 200 buses to the Stagecoach fleet.[15][16]
In April 2011 the operations at Inverness & Easter Ross were transferred to the Highland Country operating licence from the Bluebird Buses licence. In late 2011, the depot at Burnett Road closed, with the company now operating from the former Rapsons Inverness depot at Seafield Road, Inverness, which was reopened by Stagecoach.
In April 2018, Stagecoach Highlands announced it would close its Fort William depot in Caol, which housed eight buses and employed 16 members of staff;[17] the depot was subsequently purchased by local independent operator Shiel Buses in July.[18]
Operations
This section is missing information about Stagecoach operations in Aviemore and Tain. Please expand the section to include this information. Further details may exist on the talk page.(January 2023)
A majority of Stagecoach Highlands buses operate in or around the city of Inverness, where the company operates the 'Inverness City Network'.[19] Stagecoach has operated a number of battery electric buses on this network; six 'Inverness ElectriCity'-branded electric Optare Solo SRs entered service in June 2015,[20][21] later followed by 25 Yutong E10s which began entering service around the city from early 2023.[22]
In August 2022, Stagecoach Highlands and the Highlands and Islands Strategic Transport Partnership (HiTrans) launched a pilot autonomous bus service connecting the Inverness Campus with a nearby retail & business park, running in parallel to a similar trial conducted in Hannover, Germany. The bus, manufactured by Navya SAS, carries 15 passengers, including four standees, and will operate in Inverness until March 2023.[23][24]
Stagecoach in Inverness formerly ran the 'JET' service from Inverness Airport to Inverness city centre, Ardersier, Nairn, Forres and Elgin, launched in 2007 by Rapsons with the support of HiTrans. The route won the award for Scotland's Best Bus Service in 2010,[25] however, the 'JET' branding was replaced with the arrival of eight Alexander Dennis Enviro200 MMCs in regular Stagecoach livery for the Inverness Airport corridor in September 2018.[26]
X10: Connects the NorthLink Ferries terminal at Hatston with Kirkwall, Finstown, Stenness and Stromness
Stagecoach also run school service across the Orkney Mainland.
Isle of Skye
Stagecoach is the primary bus operator on the Isle of Skye, operating buses out of a single depot in Portree.[30] The Skye operation also took delivery of MCV Evoras, with eleven being delivered in November 2022 for use on both local and school services in the area.[31]
Orkney, also known as the Orkney Islands, is an archipelago in the Northern Isles off the north coast of Scotland. Orkney is 10 miles (16 km) north of Caithness and has about 70 islands, of which 20 are inhabited. The largest island, the Mainland, has an area of 523 square kilometres (202 sq mi), making it the sixth-largest Scottish island and the tenth-largest island in the British Isles. Orkney's largest settlement, and also its administrative centre, is Kirkwall.
Kirkwall is the largest town in Orkney, an archipelago to the north of mainland Scotland.
Inverness is a city in the Scottish Highlands, having been granted city status in 2000. It is the administrative centre for The Highland Council and is regarded as the capital of the Highlands.
The Mainland, also known as Hrossey and Pomona, is the main island of Orkney, Scotland. Both of Orkney's burghs, Kirkwall and Stromness, lie on the island, which is also the heart of Orkney's ferry and air connections.
Stagecoach Group is a transport group based in Perth, Scotland. It operates buses and express coaches in the United Kingdom.
Scottish Citylink is a long-distance express coach operator in Scotland and Ireland and formerly England. The company was formed as a subsidiary of Scottish Transport Group in March 1985. It is operated as a 63/37 joint venture between ComfortDelGro and Stagecoach.
Highland Scottish Omnibuses Ltd was formed as a bus operating subsidiary of the Scottish Transport Group in June 1985 from Highland Omnibuses Ltd, and operated until October 1995 when the company was split into two - Highland Bus & Coach and Highland Country Buses. The companies have since remerged and operate today as Highland Country Buses. It is now Stagecoach Highlands.
Stagecoach Bluebird is a Scottish bus company which operates bus services in the areas of Aberdeen, Aberdeenshire and Moray. It is a subsidiary of the Stagecoach Group.
Western Scottish Omnibuses Ltd, in Scotland, was a bus operating subsidiary of the Scottish Transport Group formed in June 1985 from Western SMT Company Ltd and operated until 1997, when it became Western Buses Ltd. This successor company is now a part of Stagecoach West Scotland.
Stagecoach West Scotland is an operating region of Stagecoach UK Bus, comprising Western Buses Ltd based in Ayr, Scotland.
Stagecoach East Scotland is a bus operator providing services in eastern Scotland, with its regional base in Dunfermline, Fife. The company is a subsidiary of the Stagecoach Group.
Orkney is a constituency of the Scottish Parliament (Holyrood) covering the council area of Orkney. It elects one Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) by the first past the post method of election. It is also one of eight constituencies in the Highlands and Islands electoral region, which elects seven additional members, in addition to the eight constituency MSPs, to produce a form of proportional representation for the region as a whole.
Stagecoach (South) Limited, trading as Stagecoach South, is a bus operator providing services in South East England as a subsidiary of Stagecoach. It operates services in Hampshire, Surrey, and Sussex with some routes extending into Brighton and Wiltshire. It operates 487 buses from eight depots.
Royal Naval Air Station Hatston, was a Royal Naval Air Station, one mile to the north west of Kirkwall on the island of Mainland, Orkney, Scotland. It was located near the strategically vital naval base of Scapa Flow, which for most of the twentieth century formed the main base of the ships of the Home Fleet. The airbase was designed to provide accommodation for disembarked Front-Line squadrons and accommodation for disembarked Ship's Flight Aircraft and was home to the Home Fleet Fleet Requirements Unit, 771 Naval Air Squadron.
West Coast Motors is a bus, coach and ferry operator, based in Campbeltown, Scotland. The company also operates under the name Borders Buses in the Scottish Borders and formerly under the Glasgow Citybus brand in Greater Glasgow.
Stagecoach Midlands is a bus operator providing local and regional services across the English Midlands, operating in the counties of Northamptonshire, Warwickshire and the West Midlands. The company is a subsidiary of the Stagecoach Group and is headquartered in Northampton.
David MacBrayne is a limited company owned by the Scottish Government. Formed in 1851 as the private shipping company David Hutcheson & Co. with three partners, David Hutcheson, Alexander Hutcheson and David MacBrayne, it passed in 1878 to David MacBrayne.
Stagecoach Cumbria & North Lancashire operates both local and regional bus services in Cumbria, Lancashire, Northumberland and Tyne and Wear, England, as well as Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland. It is a subsidiary of the Stagecoach Group, which operates bus, coach, rail and tram services across the United Kingdom.
The MCV Evora is a single-decker bus bodywork produced by Manufacturing Commercial Vehicles (MCV) since 2018, as the successor to the MCV Evolution. The Evora is currently available on Volvo B8RLE and Volvo B5LH chassis.
Scottish Airways was an airline serving most of Scotland, especially the Highlands and Islands. It was active from 1937 until 1947, when it was merged into British European Airways.
References
↑ "Highland Scottish sold to Clansman/Rapsons consortium". Bus & Coach Buyer. No.113. Spalding: Glen-Holland Limited. 12 July 1991. p.3.
↑ "Alexanders debt crash". Commercial Motor. Temple Press. 23 November 1989. p.18. Retrieved 21 January 2023.
↑ "Magicbus goes north". Commercial Motor. Temple Press. 14 December 1989. p.23. Retrieved 21 January 2023.
↑ "Highland drivers defect". Commercial Motor. Temple Press. 12 September 1991. p.22. Retrieved 21 January 2023.
↑ "Citylink takes road south to Metroline". The Herald. Glasgow. 25 August 1998. Retrieved 21 January 2023. In a parallel deal also announced yesterday, National Express has sold Highland Country Buses to Inverness-based bus and coach operator Rapsons for £4.0m. It was Rapsons which sold this business to National Express for £1.8m in January 1996 and the English company will book a gain of about £2.2m.
↑ Candlish, Jane (4 November 2006). "North bus drivers to strike over pay dispute". The Press and Journal. Dundee. p.2. ProQuest333967310.
↑ Wilson, Paul (8 November 2006). "Last-minute talks head off strike on the buses". The Press and Journal. Dundee. p.1. ProQuest334034769.
↑ Wilson, Paul (17 November 2006). "North bus drivers' strike called off after deal reached over pay". The Press and Journal. Dundee. p.4. ProQuest334040839.
↑ Bain, Simon (17 May 2008). "Stagecoach buys Rapson operations". The Herald. Glasgow. p.25. ProQuest333069820.
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