Stagecoach in Hull's origins can be traced back to Hull Corporation Transport, whose tramway operations began in 1899. Motorbus operations began in 1909 with a fleet of six buses, later restarting in 1921 and expanding alongside the city's trolleybus network. The trolleybus network was officially abandoned on 31 October 1964, having been gradually replaced by fleets of Leyland Atlantean motorbuses.[2] Hull Corporation Transport was one of the quickest operators of one-person operated buses,[3] and on 10 November 1972, became the first bus operator in the United Kingdom to fully phase out the use of conductors.[4][5] Earlier in the same year, Hull Corporation Transport was renamed to Kingston upon Hull City Transport (KHCT),[6] coinciding with the introduction of a new fleet livery and uniform.[7]
In November 1994, Cleveland Transit and KHCT were sold to Stagecoach Holdings for £7.7 million.[12][6] The Transit-era KHCT blue and white livery was initially maintained by Stagecoach, however on 1 January 1996, KHCT was formally renamed Stagecoach Kingston upon Hull, later shortened to Stagecoach in Hull, with the Stagecoach corporate livery being introduced by the spring of 1996.[13][14] Permission was granted by Hull City Council for Stagecoach to move operations from the former KHCT depot on Lombard Street to a new site on Foster Street, Stoneferry in November 1995, which was completed in 1996.[15][16] KHCT's Kingstonian coaching arm was acquired by EYMS and integrated into its own coaching operations in March 1997.[17][18]
Stagecoach Kingston upon Hull and twelve other bus companies in Hull were summoned to the Restrictive Practices Court by the Office of Fair Trading in November 1998 after investigations revealed they were taking part in a price fixing and market sharing "cartel" on tendered Hull City Council school bus services.[19] The OFT stated that they had uncovered evidence of representatives of the thirteen companies, including Stagecoach, secretly meeting at a Hull hotel to agree on the minimum prices they would bid to run the services and what services each company would bid for.[20][21]
250 workers at Stagecoach in Hull affiliated with Unite the Union entered a period of strike action from 7 October to 7 November 2022 in a pay dispute, disrupting bus services provided for the annual Hull Fair.[27] The strike was scheduled to last until 29 December, however negotiations between Stagecoach management and Unite representatives involving Acas resulted in the strike suspended on 7 November and formally ended on 11 November, with workers receiving a backdated 20% pay rise of up to £13 an hour.[28][29]
Services
Simplibus network
Stagecoach in Hull was the second operator in Stagecoach East Midlands to launch a 'Simplibus' network, following the launch of Stagecoach Grimsby-Cleethorpes' network in 2014. The new Hull network saw existing routes renumbered from west to east into a numerical sequence of 1–16, as well as providing new services connecting Orchard Park Estate, Kingswood and East Hull. The new services launched on 6 September 2015 and replaced the previous Frequento network.[30]
Stagecoach in Hull first took on the Priory Park Park and Ride services as a commercial operation from CT Plus in September 2014, following a retendering process by Hull City Council. The company invested in five single deckers, three of which were given blue route-branding for the service, with the aim of improving bus services for the 2017 City of Culture events.[33] Stagecoach announced it was to withdraw from operating peak time services on the park and ride in June 2023 due to low passenger numbers and high operating costs,[34] however a deal was agreed in September 2023 for Stagecoach to continue running the service until March 2025, with the park and ride's operations being reduced to operating between 6:00a.m. to 9:30a.m. and 2:30p.m to 7:00p.m. on weekdays only and bus frequency moving from every 20 minutes to 30 minutes.[35]
Retendering by the East Riding of Yorkshire Council in 2019 saw Stagecoach in Hull gain the contract to operate a seasonal park and ride service in Bridlington from East Yorkshire, also launching a bus service operating from Hull to Bridlington three times a day.[36] Stagecoach later gained Hull City Council bus service contracts from East Yorkshire in 2021, being awarded funding to run both an East Hull supermarket shuttle and services connecting two West Hull estates.[37]
