Ventura Bus Lines

Ventura Bus Lines is a large bus and coach operator in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, operating a fleet of 909 buses on 141 bus routes.

History

Early history

Ventura was founded in December 1924 by Henry Cornwall. The name and company colours (dark blue, light blue and yellow) derived from Ventura County, California where Cornwall had spent time after serving in World War I. A former employee of Track & Kintrack, St Kilda, Harry decided to form his own bus company when his employer refused to run a bus service along dirt roads through what was then Melbourne's outer east.^[1][2][3]

Cornwall began operating a bus route between

Expansion

In 1943, the

In the 1950s and 1960s, a number of operations were purchased:[2]^[4]

• Knibbs Bus Service with routes 225A
  Ferntree Gully and 226A Box Hill to Burwood
  in June 1954
• Box Hill Bus Lines with the Box Hill to Forest Hill service in February 1957
• Glen Waverley
  service in May 1958
• High Street Road Bus Service from Reg Carter with the Glen Waverley to Glen Iris service in April 1968

In 1957, a new depot was opened on the corner of Centre and

In 2004 it purchased National Bus Company from National Express becoming the largest private bus operator in Melbourne.^[9][10][11] In December 2009, Ventura purchased US Bus Lines from the Pulitano Group, operating route services in the outer east region. In July 2010, Ventura acquired Ivanhoe Bus Company, operating in the north and north east region.^[12]

In January 2012, Ventura purchased Grenda Transit from Grenda Corporation, which consisted of Cardinia Transit, Grenda's Bus Services, Moorabbin Transit, Peninsula Bus Lines and Portsea Passenger Service.^[13][14][15] As part of the financing of the deal a 15% stake in Ventura was sold to the Intermediate Capital Group.^[16]

In August 2013, as the result of the re-tendering of a number of Melbourne bus routes, the operation of SmartBus route 903, and the Doncaster and

From the 1940s, Ventura standardised on Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation bodied Bedford OBs. After purchasing a variety of AECs, Albions, Bedfords and Leylands in the 1960s, Ventura settled on heavy duty Leyland Worldmaster, Leopard and Tiger chassis for its purchases in the 1970s and 1980s.^[2]

In 1973, Ventura took delivery of the first of many

The purchases of Bentleigh Bus Lines/Hawthorn Bus Service saw the fleet expand further. Many non-Leyland buses joined the fleet including Bedfords, Elwoods, Mercedes-Benzs and Volvo B10Ms.

When Ventura sought new buses in 1992 Leyland had ceased production, so two

The old Ventura fleet livery was light and dark blue with yellow signwriting. This was replaced in 2012 by a white with dark blue and yellow flashes livery, based on the Grenda livery. New deliveries are receiving the Public Transport Victoria white and orange livery with existing buses progressively repainted.

Buses which did not receive the Public Transport Victoria livery retained the previous Grenda livery, the former two-tone blue livery, the former blue, red and white livery of US Bus Lines or the Ivanhoe Bus Company green and yellow livery.

Eight buses are painted in SmartBus livery for use on the Route 900 service, four are in V/Line livery and a plain white livery with Ventura signage has been adopted for school/charter vehicles.^[20]

References