For the Wisconsin bus line, see Badger Bus

Badgerline, latterly the Badgerline Group plc, based in Weston-super-Mare, was a bus company operating in the south west of England during the latter part of the 20th century.

Badgerline originated as the brand, from 1985, of the Bristol country operations of the Bristol Omnibus Company, a subsidiary of the state-owned National Bus Company.^[1] The livery featured a friendly Badger cartoon on a green and yellow background. In 1986, the NBC transferred the Badgerline operations to a new company, Badgerline Ltd, which was sold to its management later that year. It was one of the first NBC companies to be sold off^[2].

Badgerline became an expansionist group. It acquired several other bus companies, and effectively recreated the Bristol Omnibus Company by buying Midland Red West, which owned Bristol City Line. The company expanded from the south west into South Wales and Essex, and then floated on the stock exchange in 1993, followed by acquisition of Potteries Motor Traction (PMT) and Yorkshire Rider in 1994.^[2]

All the Group's buses carried the friendly Badger logo. Nine years later as Badgerline Group plc, it merged with GRT Group to form FirstBus, later renamed FirstGroup, based in Aberdeen. At the time of the merger between Badgerline and GRT, in May 1995, Badgerline had a fleet of 4,000 buses, while GRT had a fleet of 1,600.^[2] Badgerline's Trevor Smallwood remained chairman of First for four years, with GRT's Moir Lockhead as deputy chairman and chief executive^[2]. The new group FirstBus adopted a common corporate identity, and the Badgerline brand was dropped.

By the time of the merger, Badgerline had also already entered the UK rail market, with a stake in the Great Western Holdings company that won the Great Western Trains franchise, the second rail franchise to be sold, which First then acquired outright in 1998^[2].

The company's original Badgerine operations are now run by First Somerset & Avon. The companies in Badgerline Group plc as at the merger with GRT were:

• Badgerline
• Bee-Line
• Bristol Omnibus Company, which traded as City Line
• Eastern National
• Frontline Buses
• Midland Red West (including Midland Red Coaches)
• Potteries Motor Traction (including Pennine Blue, Red Rider and Crosville)
• SWT
• Thamesway
• Wessex Coaches
• Western National
• Yorkshire Rider

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