First Berkshire & The Thames Valley



First Berkshire & The Thames Valley is a bus operator serving Bracknell, Slough and Wokingham, in England. It is part of First Group, a major bus and train operator with a turnover of nearly £2.5 billion a year and 62,000 employees across the UK and North America. The division operates around 120 vehicles and employs 300 staff.

History
The predecessor the First Berkshire & The Thames Vally is Beeline. In 1990, this was owned by a group called Q-Drive. In 1991/2 the Reding and Newbury operations were purchased by Reading Transport - which still operate them - leaving Beeline with similar services to what First now operate. The rest of the company was sold to First in the late 1990s, and became known as First Beeline.

First Group took the decision to corporately brand their services in 2001/2, and so First Beeline became First Berkshire & The Thames Valley.

Services
The company currently operate just under 30 services, currently operating most of the town services in Bracknell, Slough and Wokingham, as well as services to surrounding areas such as Heathrow Airport, High Wycombe and Reading.

As well as normal First branded services, there are five specially branded routes. Some routes in Slough are branded as "Linx", and uses purple liveried buses (it is planned these will be repainted red soon). Similarly, some routes to Heathrow Airport are run with blue "Heathrow 7 Series" Mercedes-Benz Citaros, before the delivery of extra buses were in a silver livery. The Legoland Shuttle is run with yellow buses in Legoland graphics.

Coach services are also run under different branded. The Reading to Heathrow RailAir service uses "RailAir" branded services, and routes 700, 701 and 702 use Green Line liveried vehicles.

Other services
First Berkshire & The Thames Valley operate two school buses schemes. One uses American-style school buses, running around Runnymede, from an outstation in Chertsey, and the other is a larger scheme, run under contract to Surrey Country Council. This is Ride Pegasus!, which is run from an outstation in Merrow, Guildford. A number of routes are operated, as well as some non-school "Access Bus" service, primarily for senior citizens.