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| Parent | Ascendal Group |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1919 |
| Headquarters | Swavesey |
| Service area | Cambridgeshire |
| Service type | Bus services and National Express |
| Destinations | Cambridge Huntingdon St Neots Cambourne |
| Fleet | 45 (November 2019) |
| Website | www.whippetbus.co.uk |
Whippet, formerly Go Whippet, is a bus and coach operator based in Swavesey, Cambridgeshire, England. [1]
Whippet Coaches was founded in Huntingdonshire by bicycle salesman Henry Lee in 1919. The first Whippet coach was converted from an American ambulance. [2]
Originally based in the village of Hilton, they moved into a depot at Fenstanton in 1977. In 2009 the company sold these buildings to Stagecoach in The Fens and moved to a depot at Swavesey. In November 2014, the business was sold to Transit Systems, the parent company of London bus company Tower Transit. [3] [4] In October 2018, Go Whippet was sold to the Ascendal Group, owned by Tower Transit's former CEO Adam Leishman. [5] [6]
Whippet used to operate some summer only services to the coast. These have been running in various forms from 1957 up to 2013, and ultimately served Great Yarmouth, Lowestoft, Felixstowe, Clacton-on-Sea and Southend-on-Sea.
As of November 2019, Whippet has a fleet of 45 vehicles [7] buses are run in parts of north Cambridgeshire, including town services in St Neots, and the company also operates a few school and college contracts.
In 2014 Whippet started as a contractor for National Express. These services were discontinued in 2020, but the company currently works long-distance services on behalf of FlixBus, operating out of Victoria Coach Station in London to destinations such as Bradford, Bristol, Derby and Swansea.
In the summer of 2018, Whippet unexpectedly withdrew several services in Cambridgeshire, leaving council contracts to other independent operators.[ citation needed ]
From 7 August 2011 until 9 November 2018, Whippet operated service C on Cambridgeshire Guided Busway from Somersham to Cambridge city centre on the section between St Ives and the Cambridge Science Park. This was being run in conjunction with Stagecoach in the Fens (who ran routes A and B) who jointly with Whippet had exclusive use of the route for a period of five years in exchange for providing a minimum service frequency between 07:00 and 19:00 each weekday. [8] Whippet spent a total of £420,000 on three Plaxton Centro bodied Volvo B7RLE buses [9] that have been sold since and replaced by four Wright Eclipse bodied Volvo B7RLEs. Service C was withdrawn on 9 November 2018, leaving all bus operations on the northern section of the guided busway to Stagecoach East and ending Whippet's services in the St. Ives area. [10] [11]
Whippet launched a new bus service U (for Universal) in Cambridge in July 2016, running originally from Madingley Road Park & Ride (now: Eddington) via West Cambridge to Addenbrooke's Hospital. It is subsidised by the University of Cambridge and replaced the Uni4 service, formerly operated by Stagecoach in Cambridge. [12] The service was rerouted between Cambridge railway station and Cambridge Biomedical Campus via the southern part of the Busway, starting 3 December 2016, after delivery of seven Wright Eclipse bodied Volvo B8RLEs fitted for use on the guided busway. [13]
In addition to services C and U, in February 2019, Whippet launched a service P (for Pedigree), using the B7RLEs which previously operated on the C, between Cambridge City Centre and Addenbrooke's via the Guided Busway, thus duplicating Stagecoach's A and D services on this section. Service P lasted six months before being withdrawn in August 2019. [14]
St Ives is a medieval market town and civil parish in the Huntingdonshire district in Cambridgeshire, England, 5 miles (8 km) east of Huntingdon and 12 miles (19 km) north-west of Cambridge. St Ives is historically in the historic county of Huntingdonshire.
Stagecoach Group is a transport group based in Perth, Scotland. It operates buses, express coaches and a tram service in the United Kingdom.
Guided buses are buses capable of being steered by external means, usually on a dedicated track or roll way that excludes other traffic, permitting the maintenance of schedules even during rush hours. Unlike railbus, trolleybuses or rubber-tyred trams, for part of their routes guided buses are able to share road space with general traffic along conventional roads, or with conventional buses on standard bus lanes.
The Volvo B7RLE is a low-entry single-deck bus chassis manufactured by Volvo. It was superseded by the Volvo B8RLE in 2013.
The Alexander Dennis Enviro400 is a twin-axle low-floor double-decker bus that was built by the British bus manufacturer Alexander Dennis between 2005 and 2018. It replaced the Alexander ALX400, Dennis Trident and Plaxton President. In 2014, the Enviro400 was succeeded by the updated Alexander Dennis Enviro400 MMC and production of the classic Enviro400 ceased in 2018.
The Wright Eclipse Gemini is a low-floor double-decker bus body that was built by Wrightbus since 2001, based on the single-decker Wright Eclipse design. The second-generation Eclipse Gemini 2 was launched in 2009, followed by the third-generation Gemini 3 in 2013. Additionally, the body was available on Volvo Super Olympian chassis in Hong Kong between 2003 and 2005, marketed as the Wright Explorer.
The Volvo B10M was a mid-engined city bus and coach chassis manufactured by Volvo between 1978 and 2003. It succeeded the B58 and was equipped with the same 9.6-litre horizontally mounted Volvo diesel engine mounted under the floor behind the front axle. An articulated version under the model name Volvo B10MA was also offered, as was a semi-integral version known as the C10M, with the engine in the middle of the chassis.
First Greater Manchester is a bus operator in Greater Manchester. It is a subsidiary of FirstGroup. It was once a major operator in the northern areas of the county competing against Stagecoach Manchester which was dominant in southern areas of the county; however in recent years it has scaled back its operations, now primarily serving north eastern suburbs of Manchester, and the metropolitan boroughs of Oldham and Rochdale.
Busways is an Australian bus company operating services in Sydney, and in the Central Coast, Mid North Coast regions of New South Wales and Adelaide. It is the largest privately owned bus operator in Australia.
Sunbus was an Australian bus operator in the Australian state of Queensland. It operated in 5 regional areas across the state under contract to the Government of Queensland under the Translink banner. As of 2022 Sunbus has changed its name as part of a business re-brand by the parent company, Kinetic. Sunbus has now been dissolved into the Kinetic brand with its fleet of buses reflecting this change.
The Cambridge and St Ives branch was a railway built by the Wisbech, St Ives & Cambridge Junction Railway in the late 1840s. The railway ran from Cambridge in the south, through Fenland countryside to the market town of St Ives; more specifically, the line ran from Chesterton Junction, where it met the present-day Fen line north of the River Cam.
Earith is a village and civil parish in Cambridgeshire, England. Lying approximately 10 miles (16 km) east of Huntingdon, Earith is situated within Huntingdonshire which is a non-metropolitan district of Cambridgeshire as well as being a historic county of England. At Earith, two artificial diversion channels of the River Great Ouse, the Old Bedford River and the New Bedford River, leave the river on a course to Denver Sluice near Downham Market, where they rejoin the Great Ouse in its tidal part. At the 2001 census, the parish had a population of 1,677, reducing to 1,606 at the 2011 Census.
The Cambridgeshire Guided Busway is a guided busway that connects Cambridge, Huntingdon and St Ives in Cambridgeshire, England. It is the longest guided busway in the world, surpassing the O-Bahn Busway in Adelaide, South Australia.
Stagecoach East is a bus operator providing local and regional services across the East of England, operating in the counties of Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire. The company is a subsidiary of the Stagecoach Group and is headquartered and registered in Cambridge.
The Oxford to London coach route is an express coach route between Oxford and London along the M40 motorway. Operated by Stagecoach West under the brand name Oxford Tube, there are up to five coaches an hour via Lewknor, High Wycombe Coachway, Hillingdon, Shepherd's Bush and Baker Street terminating on Buckingham Palace Road, Victoria.
Stagecoach in Norfolk was a bus operator based in King's Lynn in Norfolk, England. It operated public bus services in the counties of Norfolk, Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire as well as numerous school and college services. It was a subsidiary of Stagecoach.
Transit Systems Group is an Australian-based public transport company, which also operates overseas through its subsidiary Tower Transit Group. Transit Systems Group is a subsidiary of the Kelsian Group, formerly SeaLink Travel Group.
Sydney, Australia is served by a number of bus operators, with Busways the largest privately owned operator in New South Wales as of January 2022 when the company took-over the NSW government's State Transit Authority. Other major operators include CDC, Transdev and Transit Systems. Most services are provided as part of the city's integrated public transport system, with routes, fares, service levels, fleet specifications and customer service standards determined by Transport for NSW. A small number of services operate outside of this network.
The Alexander Dennis Enviro400 MMC is a low-floor double-decker bus produced by the British bus manufacturer Alexander Dennis since 2014, replacing the Alexander Dennis Enviro400. The Enviro400 MMC is produced at Alexander Dennis' Falkirk and Scarborough factories in 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.
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