Originally known as the "City Circle", service 100 was introduced in Liverpool City Centre in the mid-1960s, using specially painted Leyland PD2 buses.

The advent of OMO ("One-Man-Operation") and the revision of the road layout in Liverpool City Centre forced the route to become anything but a circle, so it was re-branded as "Cityride" and used Leyland Panther buses from Garston depot. It was integrated into the duty rota of services 66 (Garston-Netherley) and 88 (Garston-Halewood).

The above picture, from the Liverpool Echo, shows Panther 1027 (FKF 906F) on Lime Street with an out-of-date destination blind.

The glossy leaflet contained pictures of Leyland Panthers at several points along the route. However, the leaflet was printed in advance of the re-launch of the service.

The photographs were of buses on other services, with their destination screens craftily edited. The top two buses are 1064 and 1065 (FKF 943G and FKF 944G), which were allocated to Garston. However, the middle left picture is 1035 (FKF 914G - the only 45-seater Panther) and the bottom left is 1102 (RKA 981G), both of which were allocated to Walton and never operated on the Cityride service! There was a flat fare of 3p for adults and 1p for children.

To the right is an experimental electric bus, CWO 600K, borrowed for evaluation. This was to have been a major breakthrough. However, with only nine seats and a battery life of about four hours, it turned out to be nothing more than a glorified milk float.

It is pictured in the Liverpool Echo struggling along Castle Street with Liverpool Town Hall in the background, (the same location as 1065 in the glossy leaflet above).

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Tony Salmon 2006-2012
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Be still and know that

I am God.
 (Psalm 46: 10)

In an early attempt to keep cars out of the city centre, it was decided to run the service without charging fares for an experimental period. On 11th February 1974 service 100 was re-branded as "Freeride". The picture below shows - from left to right - Arthur Moffatt (Director General of Merseyside PTE), Miss Janice Jarvis and Miss Joan Brinkhorn (the first passengers), Dave Nightingale (driver) and William Sefton (leader of Liverpool City Council).

The bus is Panther 1069 (FKF 948G) and the pictures are from the Liverpool Echo. At the end of March 1974 they started charging fares again, and it resumed its former branding of "Cityride"