Jonathan Welch chats to Omnibus founder Peter Crichton about his passion for the industry
Monday 16 October 1978 was a very important day for a gentleman by the name of Karol Józef Wojtyła. It was the day Karol Józef, also known as Cardinal Wojtyła, then aged 58 and Archbishop of Krakow, was elected Pope, taking the more familiar name John Paul II in honour of the late John Paul I. Meanwhile, in the altogether more gritty environs of north west England, Monday 16 October 1978 was the day that a young northerner by the name of Peter Crichton embarked on what was to become a lifelong career in the bus industry.
Peter’s career trajectory could have been very different, had he succeeded in one of his other ambitions as a school leaver, which was to join the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company. As it was, that October day saw him start down a path involving a very different kind of ‘oily cart’ as he arrived for his first day as a Traffic Trainee, a trainee scheduler with Greater Manchester PTE.
Having gone on to found Omnibus with the aim of helping schedulers to produce workable timetables more efficiently and effectively, and devoted his working life to the transport industry, it was no surprise that Peter was presented with a Gold Award for Services to the Bus Industry at the 2022 UK Bus Awards.
Having founded Omnibus in 1989, Peter remains in a Director’s role part time, though as I found out when we sat down for a virtual chat, his schedule remains a full one. “I don’t know how I had time to go to work,” he said, having taken a break from building (I daren’t say playing with!) his O gauge model railway in between rehearsals for a production of the classic Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera HMS Pinafore with, appropriately, the Bus Pass Opera Company at the Gilbert and Sullivan Festival in Buxton.
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