History
Following bus deregulation in 1986, the MetroBus (the West Yorkshire PTE) fleet was renamed Yorkshire Rider Ltd. The livery changed from verona green and buttermilk to a bright green and cream livery and a new logo with was a stylised "YR" logo, plus the name "Yorkshire Rider", with an area on the logo that incorporated the town in which the garage for that bus was located. In October 1988 Yorkshire Rider was bought by its management for £23 million.
Yorkshire Rider was then bought by Badgerline, a Bristol-based bus company, in 1994. Following the merger of Badgerline with GRT Ltd to form First Bus in 1995, its services were rebranded:
- Leeds City Link - covering the Leeds area with depots in Hunslet, Bramley and Cherry Row
- Calderline - covering Halifax and Calderdale with garages in Halifax and Todmorden
- Kingfisher Huddersfield - covering Kirklees with garages at Old Field House Lane
- Bradford Traveller - covering Bradford with a depot at Bowling Back Lane
These names were later replaced with First Leeds, First Calderline, First Huddersfield and First Bradford.
Until recently, First Quickstep, was also part of the First group. It was based at the same Kirkstall Road depot as First Leeds but was a separate organization. It is now a part of First Leeds and it runs the FreeCityBus service.
In July 2005 the company took over Morley-based Black Prince Buses, a large independent company that was once a rival to Yorkshire Rider. The Morley depot was closed down and the fleet was sold, with the exception of a couple of single-deckers and the large fleet of Scania N113 double-deckers, which were repainted into First livery and placed on the 2/3/3A and 12/13/13A services until summer 2007, when most of them were withdrawn and replaced by brand new Volvo B9TL Wright Eclipse Geminis. Some Scanias remained on the routes until early 2008 when more B9TLs arrived.
On 18 May 2008 the Kirkstall Road depot was closed after 111 years of public transport use and operations moved to a new complex in Hunslet. The site will be redeveloped as part of Leeds City Council's Kirkstall Road Renaissance Area project.
Read more about this topic: First Leeds
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