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I don't know to be honest, but it is an interesting question.

Towards Walsall, it would appear straight-forward, coming into city via current X1/X2 route but instead of terminating on Moor Street Queensway, continue up Carrs Lane and on to Lower Bull Street, to then pick up the X51 route.

This would be fine if Sprint uses Platinum buses, I don't know how well any articulated bus would handle those turns!

Towards Solihull, it would be a bit tricky and I can't see any way it can arrive in city via the X51 route to then pickup from the current X1/X2 stop, which would presumably be desired, unless that stop is relocated across the road.

So my guess is that it would arrive via the current X51 route onto Moor Street Queensway, then continue along past Moor Street station to pickup the X1/X2 route.

I think that's what probably will happen.

Some passengers having had a choice between the X1/X2 and the 60 may not be too happy that their usual X1/X2 bus stop (MS4) now only goes to Walsall and they have to walk to a different bus stop to keep their options open.

I don't use buses in the north side of Birmingham much but I think it may be the same for X51 and other A34 road buses?

192/194 ran around every 60/70 minutes. There was generally 2 buses used but a journey time of 1hr Solihull - Coventry

Coventry departure would be 1405 1505 1615 1725.

Travel yourbus took over 192Y 194 around October 1994 using Dafs.

In June 1998 the 192Y 194Y was extended to Birmingham running hourly using 4 buses Leyland lynxs 1126 1128 1220 1278 drifted in EX Travel Merry Hill.

There was also a Varient 193Y serving Warwick University .

September 1999 would see the 192 194 Transferred yo TWM Acocks Green Garage running Coventry - Acocks Green hourly using Leyland Lynxs 3 buses.

Route 192 194 cut back to Solihull 2 buses running previous  60/70 minute frequency.

I Rode 192 194 many times Great route always single deck Lynxs then B10Ls. In the final years 2008 2009 was operated by Volvo Gemini.

Travel Coventry took over the 192/194 as new service 19W hourly January 2009. Not sure when the 19W was given up.

Thanks. Do you know what route did they take between Solihull and Coventry?

Does anyone know what route will Sprint take in the city centre when passing through from either side of the city?

I can imagine one of the bus routes on Hobs Moat road being diverted to serve Old Lode Lane instead.

I've had a quick look at the Sprint bus plans, looks like they're slightly reducing the number of bus stops on the east side of Brum. If that is the case, I can imagine the 60 having their frequencies slightly boosted to pick up the slack - perhaps not necessary now that it's less likely to get stuck in a traffic due to new bus lanes (ignoring the traffic nightmare that is Small Heath of course).

Does anyone have some info on the 192 and 194 bus route between Solihull and Coventry? What were their frequency?

I noticed that there's a google maps street view with bus stop stand near Olton Station showing 192 and 194 - was the route extended to Birmingham city centre at some point?

That's one of a few major risks - Stratford, Bromsgrove and Cannock already has an established bus market.

I think Cannock is far easier for NXWM as it's closer to NXWM operations area and most people from there do visit Walsall/Wolverhampton regularly for whatever their reason is.

Bromsgrove and Stratford isn't as close.

My suggestion for Cannock is introduce a new NXWM bus route between Wolverhampton and Cannock. I am aware there is already bus route but I'm sure NXWM would be able to offer a better quality of service on that route especially it used to be operated by Arriva and now a small bus operator.

Also it'd mean Cannock will have 2 NXWM bus routes and it could push people to buy a pass rather than a ticket.

I've always wondered - why is it that TfWM choose to replace the flags with OOU ones instead of just taking the flags down? - is it so they can use the stops on diversionary routes more easily? I know in some cases it's where they are only school route stops.

In addition to what several commentors have mentioned above, it's not only TfWM who does this, it's a common practice everywhere.

DVSA monitored our overall reliability in Diamond Bus at 92%, with our Kidderminster reliability at 88%.  It is difficult to deliver more than this, with the number of emergency roadworks that pop up. 

As a result we have made services more direct, and increased the journey lengths to further improve reliability.  These actions increase the cost, and reduce the income both of which do not help the commercial viability of bus services.

When we consider new bus investment, it is difficult to justify with marginal services especially when we have major cities like Birmingham and Manchester looking to mandate Euro 6 vehicles by 2021. 



Simon

Did not know such data existed. Is this data publicity available?

Wheeleys Road and Arthur Road are not very congested as it is, not sure what the point would be to make it bus only. People living on the road would probably would be.

No point. I've only commuted on these roads during rush hour and it was moderately congested. Did not consider it was pretty much empty outside rush hour periods. The other option I can think of is Gravelly Hill road but I'm not very well-versed in North Birmingham, no idea how well/badly would it fare if the model were to be implemented.

To be frank, as Stu has stated, Birmingham city layout makes bus only roads rather impractical.

Friar park road, wednesbury has a very small section of road dedicated to bus/taxi and bike

Ooh, an interesting example. I do recall seeing something like this but in a different location, does anyone have more examples of this?

Changes have been made to the layout of roads within Birmingham city centre, and one can argue now that the whole layout is just utterly bizarre.

Road layouts appear to have been changed in order to benefit buses and taxis, but you still have a large number of motorists (individual car users) using certain routes through the city centre as 'through-routes'.

Roads such as Moor Street Queensway and Priory Queensway were designed in a way that the principal traffic flow would have been taxis and buses. But from observation, this doesn't appear to be the case.

The 'middle ring road' is a mess, so naturally motorists are trying to find ways to 'cut through' and avoid the congestion. Without realising they are adding further to the congestion within the city centre.

Without demolishing the whole of Birmingham city centre and 'starting from scratch' with dedicated bus-only roads, I really can't see this happening to be honest.

I agree, having driven through city centre a few times, it was sometimes quicker & easier to drive through the city centre than driving around on the ring road but it shouldn't happen to be honest really.

I've had a look at map, it seems that the road layout of Birmingham is far more complicated compared to Manchester.

So far, I've found two possible locations for bus only roads:

1. Broad Street.
2. Bath Row and Wheeleys Road/Arthur Road.

The option 2 provides the closest equivalent to Oxford road in Manchester. Any bus currently serving Harborne, Selly Oak or QE can use this road to skip the traffic on other major roads. Bristol Road from city centre up to the uni are not very well used and is adequately covered by Pershoe road buses anyway. I don't know Harborne buses well enough to comment about it though.

A good example for us to look at is Manchester's Oxford road. It's about 1.5 mile road, and only buses and bicycles are allowed to use the road for most of the day.

Despite a lot of buses using it, it rarely gets congested during rush hours.

Can a similar road exist in Birmingham?

And which road will that be?

Living in Manchester at moment, I can see big differences in the bus networks between Manchester and Birmingham.

There are 3 main bus operators, starting from largest - Stagecoach mainly operates in south & east Manchester but also operates in elsewhere in Manchester at lesser extent. Arriva operates some bits of the west. First mostly operates the north. They all overlap at various areas/roads. There are a lot more smaller bus operators.

In theory, it should mean the bus network in Manchester is better due to more competition right? Unfortunately not.

My complaints about the bus network in Manchester is that the ticketing and real time bus info, etc etc is not very integrated. TFGM has less visible input as to how bus works in Manchester in comparison to TFWM with Birmingham.

Bus timetables? What's that? Buses around here are late more often than not.

Bus network in Manchester tend to focus more on coverage than frequency - resulting in loads of bus services with 30 minute or hourly bus frequency each. I personally like it even though it can be difficult to remember all these bus services, it can brighten my day up if I just happen to catch one of these irregular bus services that gets me 5 minutes closer to wherever I'm going to instead of having to use main bus route and walk from a main road. There are a lot more peak-time only bus services.

It's also nice to take a slower but direct bus service - the one I currently take for my commute is 15 minutes or so slower than other route with a change yet I still take the direct one.

No inner/outer circle bus services. They do have a lot more bus services that don't go into city though, I don't find them useful but seeing it's still alive, I'm sure others find them useful. They're at worse frequency than inner/outer circle bus services though.

I noticed that a lot more Mancunians take bus - there are a lot of people who have a car but still take a bus for whatever their reason is. Also, for example, a bus service that comes every 10 minutes, is enough to fill a bus while driving through a quiet suburb in Manchester. This isn't the case in Birmingham.

Lastly, night bus service in Manchester DOES NOT mean 24 hour bus service. Unfortunately I had to learn that lesson.

Honestly, I'm surprised how well NXWM runs their bus network in Birmingham despite having no main competitor.

Does anyone know why there are still 60Es terminating either at Sheldon or Wagon Lane?

Nice little diversion on the 50 today. Makes a change.

Enters city via New Street Station/Bristol Street due to road closures in Digbeth. Never driven through St Martins Queensway in a bus before!

This has me wondering, are any of NX buses cleared to run tunnels under the city (the bit from Bristol road to the one by the Children's hospital).

A bit late but 6847 broke down last week on 20th at Coventry Road.