Why only Stagecoach?

Why am I limiting myself to Stagecoach buses on this top-to-tail quest? A fair question. Although they're my local bus company here in South Manchester, they are one of the largest transport companies in the country with bus operations stretching from Scotland to the south coast of England. The map below gives a rough impression of the towns in which Stagecoach has a bus depot within the UK. Can you see the beginnings of a route taking shape amongst the dots?

The idea came to me in 2005, in a discussion on an online forum. How far could you travel with one of the big privately-owned bus groups in the UK? First and Go-Ahead tend to stick to cities, although the latter is strong on the south coast. Arriva has some extensive coverage in the Home Counties, Midlands, Wales and North West, but largely disconnected from each other. Stagecoach were the obvious winners, as they tend to have a mixture of rural and city operations, with a large geographic spread, that none of the other big bus groups can match. A lot of their territories join up too.

If that notion is a little too geeky for your liking, think of it as a scientific control. When you're experimenting with things, you don't change multiple factors at once. For instance, if you change the gas mark *and* the baking time, then you won't know which change was primarily to blame for burning your cakes. So by keeping the bus company the same, you can better view the geographic and cultural changes. Convincing enough? :)