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Site
Introduction
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 a site
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 Why call
the site Reddibus.com? Reddibus was the
brand name adopted by the National Bus Company subsidiary Midland Red for its
expanding bus network in Redditch when it was launched on 13th March 1976. This
new network of bus services used 15 vehicles and saw frequencies increase by
300% and passengers by 100%. The
idea for the Reddibus network was launched on 27th June 1975 at a meeting
of the recently formed Transportation Steering Group. Redditch had been designated a new town in 1964 as
an overspill for the nearby City of Birmingham and in common with the Runcorn which
was another new town in
Cheshire, Redditch was designed around public transport with the bus being the
main transport provider. As well as having more trees per head of
population than anywhere else in Britain Redditch also probably has more bus lanes than
anywhere else for the size of town. The town's main circular bus route the
services 57 and 58 are each 7.5miles in length with a third of that on bus only
roads. Much of the rest of the route is on roads with limited car access. The initial network was
expanded in March 1977 when four further vehicles were added (Leyland Nationals
NOE607-10R) and the Redditicket was launched. This ticket brand name continued
in use until February 2003 when First Midland Red introduced a range of
corporate First branded tickets to Redditch.
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The first bus service numbered
17 in Redditch was started on 4th April 1914 and ran from Birmingham. It started at the Bull Ring in
Birmingham City Centre and ran to Redditch via Northfield and Longbridge. In
1915 it was rerouted via Cotteridge as per the present day service 146. By 1925
the route had been renumbered 126. The Midland Red Garage in Church Road in
Redditch was opened on 1st July 1931 to cater for the
increase in local services within the town. First Midland Red closed the garage
on 21st January 2004 and sold it to a property developer called Mohammad
Farooqui who has rented the building to Pete's Travel on a 5 year lease. Pete's Travel
(know trading as People's Express) moved into the garage on 13th April 2004.
People's Express moved out
on Friday 17th
June 2005 and the building is currently to let. The two blue and white spot logos at
the top of the page represent the Midland Red Garage "Leopard
Spots" for Redditch or garage 18. The original 28 Midland Red Garages
were all given an individual colour spot logo which until the 1950's were
carried by each bus next to the rear registration plate to denote vehicle
allocation.
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The majority of the information on the site is post Sunday
26th October 1986 when bus operation in Britain outside of London was deregulated.
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Firstgroup
introduced a new computerised asset management system in 2002 called Sema
Voyager. All assets owned by the group are numbered with the vehicles being the
largest items. First PMT experimented with the system with other Group member
companies following on as the new computer system was installed. First Midland
Red will be one of the last subsidiaries to adopt the new system. To conform
with the requirements of the system all vehicles are allocated a unique 5 digit
fleet number. The renumbering of the First Midland Red vehicles benefited from
the system refinements so that in the main new numbers have some resemblance to
either the old fleet number or the registration mark. This follows problems in
other group subsidiaries where the fleet numbers are used for either radio call
signals or for vehicle fuelling. A start on renumbering vehicles was made on
Saturday 13th March 2004 with full application of the new numbers taking the
next few days to fully apply. All references to First vehicles after March 2004
use the national numbers.
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Back
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page last
updated 24th October 2005
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