Reading Buses, which featured in a CBW operator profile in issues 1646 and 1647, is marking 20 years of its colourful route branding. The company’s route branding journey started on 25 October 2004 when it introduced what was then a radical new look, with the aim of making buses easier to navigate for users.
Using new buses with a variety of improved features, and starting with its ‘flagship’ route 17, the new era of route branding saw the route become ‘purple 17’ complete with a new purple livery on a standard beige background.
This proved a great success for the company, and the route is still known as purple 17. Over the following 20 years, the company expanded its route-branding across the whole network, introducing further coloured routes and names such as claret 21 and yellow 26, whilst others were named after big cats such as leopard 3 and lion 4. The beige background was replaced by full colour branding from 2011 onwards.
On Saturday 26 October 2024, Reading Buses ran a series of special buses throughout the day to mark the anniversary, including former Reading Buses vehicles from the mid 2000s operating extra journeys on purple 17, emerald 5 and 6 and berry 23 and 24 routes alongside the usual vehicles.
The company still has the first two buses that carried the purple livery still in its fleet due to the Covid-19 pandemic delaying replacements, albeit they are now silver generic buses that are mainly relegated to school runs, but ran in normal service on the purple 17 for one last day as new bus deliveries will see them replaced in the coming weeks.
The visiting guest vehicles wore very different looks, carrying the colours of their current owners – Stephensons of Essex, Bluestar and Salisbury Reds, which lent the buses for the day. All of the visiting buses were new to Reading Buses, before being sold as ethanol, diesel-electric hybrid and bio methane fuelled vehicles entered the fleet in Reading. As part of the celebration, the ‘guest’ buses provided trips on top of the normal services completely free of charge.
Chief Executive of Reading Buses Robert Williams said in advance of the event: “Our unique identity for each route helps make them easier for customers to remember and our buses easier to recognise, helping to improve the customer experience when travelling with us. Our individual route branding requires more detailed planning up front, however, it benefits all our customers from regular commuters to first-time customers, and brightens up the town. It’s also of benefit to visually impaired people and visitors to the route who can be sure that seeing a striking colour from a distance is their bus.”
