Lothian Buses is the largest provider of bus services in and around Edinburgh, Scotland. It is entirely municipally owned, with 91% ownership by the City of Edinburgh Council and the remainder owned by Midlothian Council, East Lothian Council and West Lothian Council. Lothian Buses Limited is registered in Annandale Street, Edinburgh, with company number SC096849.
Origins to 1956 Several tramway companies were founded in Edinburgh in the late nineteenth century.
The Edinburgh Street Tramways Company was founded in 1871, initially operating a horse-drawn tram line from Haymarket to Bernard Street in Leith, a separate burgh from Edinburgh. Edinburgh and District Tramways took over the company's routes within Edinburgh in 1893 while the Leith Burgh Corporation took over routes within their boundaries in 1904, running them as Leith Corporation Tramways, leading Edinburgh Street Tramways to cease trading.
In 1888, Edinburgh Northern Tramways began operating cable-hauled tram services from George Street to Ferry Road and Comely Bank. They were also taken over by Edinburgh and District Tramways in 1897.
The Corporation of the City of Edinburgh (then the formal name for the city council) introduced a motor bus service in July 1914. This service was short-lived, with the buses requisitioned for wartime use, and services did not resume until after the First World War. In December 1916, the Corporation published a report they commissioned from various tram experts. Having only been tasked to report on the future of cable trams regarding potential expansion and alternative traction methods, it commented on the potential of the motor bus to substitute trams, concluding that tramcars' replacement with motor buses would incur a total loss of £39,425 per annum and that the bus only had a future serving thinly populated districts or acting as a feeder for trams. The report was heavily criticised by The Commercial Motor as being wholly one-sided, with fallacious assumptions, seeming to them a deliberate attempt to discredit buses. It recommended that the Corporation procure independent advice from those with experience running motor buses at the necessary scale. In contrast to the negativity of the tram experts, the Scottish Motor Traction Company was reportedly in good financial health, being able to both "pay the petrol tax and to make profits in Edinburgh and district." in the same year.
The City Corporation took over Edinburgh and District Tramways on 1 July 1919, forming the Edinburgh Corporation Tramways Department. At the same time, it began seasonal bus tour services around Holyrood Park using Leyland charabancs. The first post-war regular bus service began on 29 December 1919. It was extended in March 1920, supplementing the trams by running between Ardmillan Terrace and Abbeyhill via Holyrood Palace, the Royal Mile and the Castle. In March 1921, the route was extended again to Easter Road.
Edinburgh Corporation Tramways and Leith Corporation Tramways merged on 10 November 1920.
By the end of 1919, the corporation was applying to Parliament for legal powers to run motor buses 5 to 10 miles beyond the city boundaries. Fares for ordinary services were charged on a graduated scale based on distance – the higher the fare (charged by the penny, 1d, 2d, etc.), the further the distance. As of early 1922, 1d bought 1,033 yards, while 5d bought 4 miles 1,170 yards. Special services in the early 1920s included football specials (requiring as many as 30 extra buses) and late-night services to venues like the Marine Gardens ballroom, with the entrance fee included in the ticket. In the early years, buses and trams also carried parcels, working with a network of collection/delivery boys, with the head office acting as a sorting office.
By the end of 1920, the corporation was considering the replacement of northern cable tram routes with buses. By the summer of 1921, the number of buses and coaches using The Mound as an interchange was causing concern for the City Magistrates. By May 1921, the department manager was already crediting the buses' contribution to the city's transport system, which then also comprised cable and electric trams, preventing rate relief from being necessary. By early 1922, buses had replaced a quarter of the cable-tram network (approximately 6.2 miles).
In 1922, there were bus garages in Shrubhill, which had a capacity of 53 vehicles, and Henderson Row, which held up to 45. In 1926, the bus fleet moved into Central Depot on Annandale Street, a former Industrial Exhibition hall, which is still Lothian Buses' main depot today as of March 2025. Hoping for economies of scale, all of the Corporation's road transport fleet (including such vehicles as fire tenders and waste collection vehicles) were originally to be garaged in this depot.
Between 1920 and 1925, the experience of running buses at high frequency (every 3 mins) on busy city routes to temporarily replace cable trams exposed the early designs' weaknesses – the vibration issues (particularly bad due to Edinburgh's paved streets), the low capacity and narrow doors in comparison to trams, and the fact that, despite their speed advantage between stops, longer load/unload times often meant they were slower overall. In some cases, the buses were so unpopular they were removed and replaced with electric trams. On the other hand, they were showing their usefulness in other areas. Because of this, by 1925, the department's manager believed trams should be retained for the heaviest and busiest loadings but never for new routes with a frequency of less than 6 per hour, while buses would remain employed on routes either complementing or connecting existing tram lines or on routes that were unsuitable or uneconomic for trams. He nonetheless advocated for the bus as a necessary part of new housing developments such as Lochend, where revenue growth over time was evident and considered the vibration issue solved since the introduction of pneumatic tyres. He concluded that as both modes are so interdependent, they "should be considered as a single transport organization for the city."
The effect of solid rubber motor bus tyres on the road surface was an early issue. Reimbursement for repairing the damage to the roads in Holyrood Park by the tour charabancs was laid down as a condition of operating there in the 1921 season. In 1921, the city deputy surveyor found that no undue damage was being done by buses on tarmacked roads, with some not damaged at all, but water-bound macadam surfaces and sett paving without concrete underlay were vulnerable to rutting and other issues. On one hilly route, after residents complained of vibration caused by the buses, various remedies were deployed – limiting the speed to 8 mph, descent in gear, and fitting of super-cushion tyres (Dunlop and North British). The speed limit was also necessary for granite paved sections of running, which were extensive in Edinburgh.
This record of the early introduction of buses was hailed by The Commercial Motor in 1926 as a sign of the Edinburgh authority's foresight in recognising "the part which the motorbus was destined ultimately to play in the solution of the passenger transport problems of the age". This was contrasted with Glasgow Corporation, which, despite having twice the population of Edinburgh, had only begun bus services in December 1924.
In the early 1920s, batch-by-batch reliability of buses could be unpredictable and often required running adjustments. The combination of the build quality of early AEC vehicles and the professionalism of the Corporation's garage staff produced in-service mileage figures and engine life that The Commercial Motor praised as "exceptionally good". Measures taken included mandatory defect reporting by drivers at the end of each shift. This preventative maintenance regime called for inspection/repairs every 10 days (with the spare parts inventory including complete engines) with close monitoring of parts usage, and an overhaul/repaint cycle of every 18 months. To improve the system, the Corporation was modifying buses as early as 1921, experimenting with a new type of rear shock absorber using rubber pads on one of its Leylands and widening the doors of buses during overhaul. Examples of in-house innovation included a portable bus electrics testing apparatus in 1932 and the establishment of a soap-making plant inside the Laundry at Shrubhill depot in the 1940s, in response to the need for a soap which did not damage vehicle paintwork.
All horse and cable-operated trams on the network were fully electrified by 1923.
By 1926, there were 12 regular bus routes with a total mileage of 43 working to Bath Street, Blackford, Bonnington, Cameron Toll, Colinton, Cramond, Easter Road, Juniper Green, Hillend, Lochend, Newcraighall, Portobello and Surgeon's Hall. The average number of passengers per mile was just under 9, with the average fare around 1.6d.
Good loadings on an experimental night service run from October 1925 to April 1926 saw the Corporation make plans to introduce regular winter night services.
In the 1920s, the average speed of the bus fleet approached, and then surpassed, that of the trams. The change occurred some time in the window of the 1927/8 financial year – in the space of this period the average speed of the buses went from 8.25 mph to 9.5 mph, in contrast to the trams, which went from 8.5 mph to 8.76 mph.
In 1928, given the increasing importance of buses, the Edinburgh Corporation Tramways Department was renamed the Edinburgh Corporation Transport Department. In 1928, the Corporation introduced measures to ensure bus operators could not undercut trams, by insisting one-way fares on routes duplicating trams must be at least 1d (one penny) higher, and that other forms of ticketing must not be cheaper than equivalent tram travel.
Edinburgh was one of many corporation transport systems in the UK that began employing female conductors in large numbers during the Second World War.
Edinburgh Corporation's tram network was abandoned between 1950 and 1956.
1956 to present
In 1975, under the local government reorganisation which followed the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1973, ownership of Edinburgh Corporation Transport passed to the Lothian Regional Council's Department of Public Transport. The operation was duly renamed Lothian Regional Transport.
The Transport Act 1985 deregulated bus services in Great Britain and required that municipal bus operations be run as commercial companies rather than as public service departments. Therefore, on 26 October 1986 the operation became Lothian Region Transport plc, better known by its initials 'LRT', a company wholly owned by Lothian Regional Council. Although the then-Conservative government had sought to have LRT privatised, with an offer being made for a management buyout of the company and interest in buying the company being expressed by Stagecoach Holdings, the privatisation of LRT was resisted by local Labour councillors. The Lothian Regional Transport identity was retained beyond the abolition of Lothian Regional Council on 1 April 1996, with 91% of the ownership of the company passing to the new City of Edinburgh Council and the remaining 9% distributed to the neighbouring East Lothian, Midlothian and West Lothian councils. The company was eventually rebranded to Lothian Buses plc on 6 January 2000.