Private company

First Glasgow

Bus operator in Greater Glasgow, Scotland

First Glasgow is the largest bus company serving the Greater Glasgow area in Scotland. It is a subsidiary of FirstGroup. The company operates within the area covered by the Strathclyde Partnership for Transport, a public body responsible for helping to co-ordinate public transport services in the Greater Glasgow area.2 Wikipedia text CC BY-SA 4.0

Last updated Oct 21, 2026.

Overview

1996Founded1
LG71DNF First Glasgow 64120 ADL Enviro200EV BYD D9UR (52511453657)
Photo: km30192002, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons4

First Glasgow is the largest bus company serving the Greater Glasgow area in Scotland. It is a subsidiary of FirstGroup. The company operates within the area covered by the Strathclyde Partnership for Transport, a public body responsible for helping to co-ordinate public transport services in the Greater Glasgow area.2

The story

First Glasgow was created through FirstGroup's buyout of Strathclyde Buses (created from the former Greater Glasgow Passenger Transport Executive bus fleet, formerly the municipal Glasgow Corporation Transport), which had itself recently bought out the former Kelvin Central Buses (an amalgamation of Kelvin Scottish and Central Scottish, owned by the state-owned Scottish Bus Group).

First Glasgow has two operator's licences:

First Glasgow (No. 1) Limited – the former Strathclyde Buses licence

First Glasgow (No. 2) Limited – the former Kelvin Central Buses licence

Buses carry legal signwriting for First Glasgow Limited, despite this having been a dormant company since at least 2008.

From Wikipedia’s article on First Glasgow, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3

Products and brands

Services

First Glasgow mainly run services in Greater Glasgow and Lanarkshire areas of Strathclyde. However, some services also run outside of these areas. It was one of the first bus operators to introduce an "overground", a colour-coded set of bus routes with route branding on the bus exteriors and timetables. As of 2006, route branding has been removed from buses but remained on timetables until mid 2008.

First Glasgow reintroduced route branding in the form of SimpliCITY in May 2013 as a way to improve bus services in Glasgow, after a period of taking consultation from residents of Glasgow about the planned route changes. Buses were installed with free Wi-Fi and were branded with SimpliCITY logos, while routes were simplified in order to make more frequent journeys in and out of the city centre.

Fleet

As of July 2025, First Glasgow operates a fleet of over 690 buses on over 84 routes, a majority of these buses being built by either Alexander Dennis or Wrightbus.

A Low Emission Zone (LEZ) covering Glasgow city centre was introduced on 31 December 2018; the first phase of this applying solely to local service buses. In October and November 2018, to comply with the new emission standards, First Glasgow placed into service a first batch of Alexander Dennis Enviro400 MMCs onto route 75, followed by an order for a further 53 Enviro400 MMCs, 10 Enviro400 Cities for the Glasgow Airport Express service, and 12 Enviro200 MMCs for delivery in 2019, partly funded by Transport Scotland's Scottish Green Bus Fund.

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Battery electric buses first entered service with First Glasgow in the form of two BYD Alexander Dennis Enviro200EV single-deck buses in January 2020, purchased with funding from SP Energy Networks for service on route M3. 22 more Enviro200EVs were later delivered to Caledonia depot in November 2021, which were used as shuttle buses for the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference being held in the city, followed by a repeat order for 50 more in September 2022. Orders were also made for 91 BYD Alexander Dennis Enviro400EV double-decker buses alongside 35 more Enviro200EVs in March 2021, the first of which began to enter service from December 2021, and 50 Enviro200EVs began to be delivered to Scotstoun depot from June 2023.

First Glasgow aims to be an entirely zero-emission company by 2035, with over 30% of the fleet's buses being electric, and the vast majority of the remaining diesel buses being LEZ compliant. The company's Caledonia depot is the largest electric vehicle charging station in the United Kingdom, currently capable of charging 150 electric buses at once, with infrastructure work currently underway to expand this to a total of 350 charging points. 27 dual-head charging units are also situated at Scotstoun depot.

Thirty Enviro200EVs were temporarily withdrawn by First Glasgow in January 2025 in order to resolve "structural failures", with diesel and electric buses being loaned in from across the FirstGroup to replace the fleet. The majority of these were repaired and had reentered service by March 2025, although a number of the loaned buses stayed in the fleet.

From Wikipedia’s article on First Glasgow, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3

Timeline

  1. 1996Founded Founded1

Sources

The numbers on this page point here. Each one links to the record it came from.

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