First Leeds Totally Explained

Everything about First Leeds totally explained

First Leeds is a bus operator based in and around Leeds in West Yorkshire, England. As a branch of First Group, it's the dominant public transport company in the city.

History

Following bus deregulation in 1986, MetroBus's (the West Yorkshire PTE) fleet was rebranded as 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", there was an area on the logo which incorporated the town in which the bus garage for that bus was located. In October 1988 Yorkshire Rider was privatised being bought by its management for £23million. Yorkshire Rider was then bought out 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 and based at depots on Kirkstall Road, Bramley and Cherry Row
Calderline - covering Halifax and Calderdale, and based at garages in Halifax and Todmorden
Kingfisher Huddersfield - covering Kirklees, and with garages at Old Field House Lane
Bradford Traveller - covering Bradford, and with a depot at Bowling Back Lane

Yorkshire Rider was later rebranded again and these names were replaced with First Leeds, First Calderline, First Huddersfield and First Bradford. Despite rebranding, the legal name of the company is still Yorkshire Rider Ltd, although it's now Yorkshire Rider trading as a First group service.
Until recently, another company, 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 currently runs the FreeCityBus service.
In July 2005 the company took over Morley-based Black Prince Buses, a large independent company which was once a rival to Yorkshire Rider. The Morley depot was closed down and most of the fleet were sold on, 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repainted into First livery and placed on the 2/3/3A and 12/13/13A services until summer 2007, when most of them were withdrawn and replaced by brand new Volvo B9TL Wright Eclipse Geminis.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. There are still a few left in service, used on a wide range of the company's services across West Yorkshire.

Fleet

It has an extremely large fleet which includes a number of Wright Eclipse Gemini, Solar and articulated buses, which are Volvo B10LA's, as well as Dennis Darts with a mixture of Alexander Dash (new in 1995) and Plaxton Pointer (1996).
Other buses in the fleet include a large batch of Volvo B7TL's with Alexander ALX400 new between 2000-2 and a sizable batch of Volvo Olympians with Alexander Royale bodywork new in 1997/8, older double deckers include some Leyland Olympians with Roe and Optare bodywork (Optares being new in 1985-7, built to a Roe design) bought new between 1982-7 (of which a lot were withdrawn in 2006), they also have a big batch of Scania N113's, some new mainly with Alexander bodywork plus one with Northern Counties Palatine in 1990/1, some Alexanders from Black prince (new in 1989-91) and some long-wheelbase East Lancs E-type bodied examples new to Hull in 1989. Most of the Scania deckers have been withdrawn or transferred within the Group by a batch of 30 new Wright Eclipse Geminis on the Volvo B9TL.
They also have a lot of Alexander Strider bodied Scania N113's new in 1993/4 at a time when single deckers were bough in large numbers, they also have 5 1994 L113's with the same bodywork which came from York when a year old. Low floor single deckers are mainly Wright bodied Scanias bough in 1998-9, early ones are L113 and later ones are the L94UB, the newest single deckers are Volvo B7RLE/Wright Eclipse Urban's new in Spring 2008.

Leyland Atlantean

For many years the company operated a large fleet of Leyland Atlanteans which were seen as Leeds' answer to the AEC Routemaster as they were the most popular and largest fleet in the city. The most popular of these was the Roe bodied Atlantean and you couldn't go ten seconds without seeing one in the street. The Atlanteans were well maintained running for nearly 4 decades and even with the introduction of low-floor Volvo B7TL's the buses still remained in service until May 2004 when the last ones were withdrawn. Most of them have now either being scrapped or are in preservation, but that'll always remain the symbol of Yorkshire Rider. In fact, the original Yorkshire Rider livery was designed primarily for the Atlantean.

Services

First Leeds operates services mainly in the Leeds area but also run services into Bradford, Ilkley and Skipton. The services operate from various depots in Leeds.

Overground

In the last few years, First has introduced branding known as 'Overground' on bus services which are frequent during the daytime. Based on the London Underground network where each frequent service is given a recognisable colour, each Overground service also has its own colour line. The concept is now a prominent fixture throughout all First bus companies in the UK. The standard frequency of services is 10 minutes. In other areas, some services have Overground frequencies of 15 or 20 minutes.
In December 2007, First changed some of its Overground route colours. The 2 service changed from Yellow to Red, combining with services 3 & 3A, while the 12 service changed from Green to Blue, combining with services 13 & 13A. The decision was made by First Leeds because they believe it would "make it simpler to identify where the buses go" . .
The services that form the Overground network in Leeds are:

Number	Line	Route
1	Brown	Holt Park - Headingley - City Centre - Beeston - Cottingley
2	Red	Middleton - City Centre - Moortown - Roundhay
3/3A	Red	Cottingley (Evening only) - White Rose Centre - City Centre - Brackenwood (3)/Gledhow (3A)
4	ftr	Pudsey - City Centre - St James Hospital - Seacroft - Whinmoor
12	Blue	Middleton - Belle Isle - Hunslet - City Centre - Roundhay
13/13A	Blue	Middleton - Hunslet - City Centre - Brackenwood (13)/Gledhow (13A)
16/16A	Claret	Pudsey - Farsley - Rodley (16A) - Bramley - Armley - City Centre - Seacroft
18/18A	Pink	Garforth - Colton - City Centre - Tinshill (18)/Ireland Wood (18A)
33/33A	Light Green	Otley (33 (Eve/Sun)/33A) - Menston (33 (Eve/Sun)/33A) - Guiseley - Yeadon (33A) - Horsforth - Kirkstall - City Centre
37	Beige	Halton Moor - City Centre
40	Indigo	Seacroft - Cross Gates - City Centre
42	Mauve	Old Farnley - City Centre - St James Hospital - Oakwood
49	Purple	Monkswood - St James Hospital - City Centre - Kirkstall - Bramley
50/50A	Orange	Seacroft - St James Hospital - City Centre - Kirkstall Lane - Horsforth
51/51A	Magenta	Moor Allerton - City Centre - M621 (Monday to Saturday Daytime) - Holbeck (Evening and Sunday) - Morley
56	Turquoise	Moor Grange - City Centre - Whinmoor
71	Peach	Wigton Moor - Primley Park - City Centre
96	Sky	Holt Park - Tinshill - Headingley - City Centre

Late Night Buses

First Leeds operate two night bus services every Friday and Saturday night, the 921 and 928. From early November until Christmas then Christmas Eve and New Years Eve, First also run several night buses along existing routes every Friday and Saturday night.

Fares & Tickets

First Leeds offers a range of First branded tickets:

FirstDay - a day ticket which can be used on First services in West Yorkshire.

FirstDay Off-Peak - a day ticket available after 9.30 am Monday - Friday and all day at the weekend. It is limited to First services in the Leeds Metropolitan area.

FirstDayOut - FirstDayOut is a day ticket aimed at children and young teenagers which can be used on First services in West Yorkshire.

FirstWeek and FirstWeek Greenzone - weekly tickets. Greenzone is limited to an area covering roughly Leeds city centre and some of the inner suburbs. All above tickets may be bought on the bus.

FirstMonth, First3Month and FirstYear - passes covering an extended period. A photo card is required and they must be purchased from Metro travel centres, post offices or bus stations.

FirstMonth Student, FirstTerm Greenzone and term tickets are available to students only. First also accepts West Yorkshire Metro tickets including Day Rover and Metrocard.

ftr

On 3 January 2007, a new concept of public transport was introduced to Leeds, the ftr. This was introduced onto the Olive Line 4 service from Whinmoor to Pudsey.
It is the second scheme to be introduced by First Group after the first scheme in York. However the scheme in York has faced many troubles like underpowering of the engine and ticket machine problems. However the engine problems have been rectified and "Customer Service Hosts" have been employed who will issue tickets to passengers. Also unlike York where the 4 service was converted to ftr vehicle operation within a day. First decided to drip feed the ftr vehicles onto the service so passengers could get used to it and also minimise all other troubles that occurred in York.
The ftr are based on Wright StreetCar body which is on a Volvo B7LA chassis, however the chassis on the StreetCars are different from the conventional B7LA where there isn't the "closet" at the rear of vehicle. The livery is designed by Ray Stenning's Best Impressions design agency.

Further Information

Get more info on 'First Leeds'.

External Link Exchanges

Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:

<a href="http://first_leeds.totallyexplained.com">First Leeds Totally Explained</a>

Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned.