Tuesday 4 September 2012

What do You Know about Uno [1]?

A card game?
fbb's family gave him a pack a couple pf Christmasses ago. It is a simple but infuriating game whereby chosen cards instruct the player to collect or discard from their hand; clearly understood by fbb's grandchildren but still something of a mystery to the "old man"!

Or it's a bus company.
Uno, whose legal title is Universitybus Limited, was set up as an 'arms length' company by the University of Hertfordshire in 1992. It has its own Board of Directors and is expected to run on a fully commercial basis. In the early days, it was a thorn in the flesh of one of the Fearnley-led "Sovereign" Companies, the former London Country North East.
In 2005 it was re-branded "Uno" to distance the company from being a purely "student" service ...
... and the buses were painted in pink and purple, a departure from the previous grey, black and white colour scheme.

Shortly after buying the St Albans operations of Centrebus (Holdings), UNO helped to found a voluntary partnership of local authorities, the university and the bus and rail operators serving St Albans with the aim of co-ordinating and improving public transport across the City. Local buses have been rebranded as "Pink". Recent devlopments have seen a small fleet of "hybrid" buses taking on the City's local routes.
Tendered and commercial routes now run throughout Hertfordshire in addition to the prime provision of student transport to and between Campuses.

From the little Potters Bar town service ...
... to longer distance routes penetrating well into the London buses area, (as here at Queensbury on the London Underground Jubilee line) ...
...  Uno is now the second largest bus operator in Hertfordshire. You even go to Stansted Airport, you know!
Up to now, however, most routes have been operated in and from bases within Hertfordshire

From last weekend (Sunday 1st September) Uno began operating in Northampton, serving the two University Campuses.

Did Uno that Northampton had a University? More tomorrow!

Fat Bus Bloke's Bible Blog has a look at The Big Bang Theory today (read here).

 Next Bus Blog : Wednesday 5th September 

4 comments:

  1. Actually, there are two Operating Licences, one in the name of Universitybus Ltd, the other is Uno Buses Ltd. The latter holds the Northampton registrations, but not the St Albans ones, which is curious, as the VOSA website shows St Albans as a base only of Uno Buses.

    And are buses going "towards Stanstead" heading to somewhere other than a similar-sounding Airport?

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  2. There isn't a place called Stansted or Stanstead (the latter just being a common misspelling), though there is a place called Stansted Mountfitchet, after which the airport is (presumably) named.

    Neil

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  3. Hey, I hadn't spotted that. Bad house point for Uno. I must confess "Stansted" had always give me problems, spelling-wise. I always try to add the erroneous extra "a"!

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  4. There is a place called "Stanstead" on the Suffolk/Essex borders. Not what Uno intended though.

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