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Do Johnsons have set vehicles or vehicle types per duty? I am wanting to get on the Scanias, Metrodeckers and Tempos before Johnsons cease but they don't track on bustimes anymore so I can't work out where the buses go. I can see though from when they did track in April, buses seemed to do some funky stuff, cross interworking basically everything.

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

I've seen every vehicle type on the Banbury routes, even on the same journeys, so pretty pot luck to be honest. Stratford is by far your best bet

Wasn't the frequency higher at one stage on the Bromsgrove to Catshill section with the 64/144E from Diamond running to?

And don't forget that service MRD do too

I vaguely remember the Diamond 64 running direct via the A38 through Lickey End, not via Catshill

Diamond to acquire Johnson's Excelbus just been announced

https://www.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=5007743022608540&id=839463772769840&m_entstream_source=timeline

Interesting note. 
It will mean Diamond West Midlands and Diamond South West will both be serving Oxfordshire. With Johnson's routes to Banbury and the 250 Oxford-Bicester 

Johnsons just posted on Facebook that the bus operation has been acquired by Diamond 

Julian peddle predicted in a recent online discussion that he felt interurban services would be most at risk with frequency being cut back & those that run hourly at risk of being withdrawn.
It looks like his prediction is coming true, the government need to re look at the way they support the industry & quickly or predictions of 20 - 30% service reductions will come true. The kick the can down the road method of funding is simply not sustainable operators need certainty if they are to invest in the future of bus.

People (including politicians) think that private bus companies have been raking in the money, but the truth is now plain to see. A lot of services were marginal at best but were retained for the good of the "network".
So what do you when the network or large parts of it are no longer viable the answer is to start cutting parts off, this then leads to a downward spiral of decline.
We need more political buy in to what operators want after all it's the operators that will live or die by these decisions not politicians.

The thing is, such interurban services are a vital part of the whole idea of having a "network" of services. The fact that, in the case of the 144, it's a different company which would require a different ticket makes it practically useless to most potential users. It makes it more akin to the train in that sense, which is obviously quicker so anyone wanting to do such interurban travel by public transport will travel further to the train and use that, or just use a car.

The only real way I see to save these interurban services (purely as a passenger, zero business sense here) is to fully integrate ticketing across all companies, and indeed all forms of public transport. But that's never gonna happen in this country because there's no incentive so we'll just lose these services.

Could totally see it coming, obviously First chasing the commercial local traffic has made that bit more profitable and worthwhile and obviously the Cross City line was going to take some Brum traffic from some areas of Bromsgrove.

I just hope that something better could be made of the link from Rubery down to Bromsgrove at least, be it over Lickey or round via J4, the current 202 is only hourly Mon-Sat daytime that could be much improved on. And at least some replacement connection for the Worcs bit of Rubery up the Bristol Road into Brum.

I would also have thought that someone would have made more of connecting areas of Bromsgrove to the station when the Cross City line started up. Realistically only the 147/318 have made anything of that and between them and the Diamond routes they're hardly frequent enough to be worth locals using over their own cars.

(from the Claribels thread to avoid going massively off topic....)

The X15 is being included into the running boards covering all these routes as well. NXWM instead of bidding for all the different routes put one combined bid in to cover the X15, 77, 167, 168 & 604 which will all be run by Walsall garage

LOL, what? Walsall? The garage that have twice given up the 77 so that a closer garage can run it? So extending it back to Walsall then or running it from a distance/interworking it to guarantee it will all fail?

Oh how the once mighty 377 has fallen into a route that gets all the tendered contract stuff added in

AG 41 will be QE Hospital to Heartlands Hospital via Acocks Green from 24th April.
Likely replacing the claribel 36.

God forbid that stretch finally gets a sensible clockface frequency instead of every 45 mins, even if it gets cut to hourly it'll still be more useful for potential passengers

Interesting that they decided they couldn't stop Rugeley trains at Hamstead this weekend, any other time trains are diverted via Soho they manage to stop them at Hamstead why not this time?

just my two cents

surely you don't need to change any of the routes and just add a peak time X20 service similar to the current 936/937 set up

I always thought the people of Bartley Green were in uproar at the effective cut back in service from the old 22 to the new X22, so would have thought if anything then just up the frequency of the X22 (unless of course, people at the time were moaning for the sake of moaning when something changed, but that never happens does it?....)

Hate to be that guy, but.....
You wouldn't get these troubles with a paper ticket...

The new 31 in Cov probably also a contender now, only like 25 min round trip

How many of the Centros are electric now? Do I assume it's the ones marked as the blue/green livery on BusTimes?

Something of interest for everyone. A recent FOI was sent in to Staffordshire Council regarding S106 funding from the Persimmon Homes 'Norton Meadows' development. The council state that
The replacement for route 3 will have a change of route.

Hopefully that means a more sensible and perhaps direct route to Cannock, because let's face it the current 3 is hardly an appealing prospect.
Unfortunately, as with most S106 funding, it will probably end up being a completely non-sensical route or just tacking that development onto the current 3

Getting a direct train from Wolves to Walsall, then changing on one up to Cannock, might be more appealing to some folk. It will almost certainly affect the 529 more though.

Yeah that's what I was aiming at. It's the idea that a "direct" bus takes an hour, so even with having to change trains you're going to have more people chose train over bus. And then *if* they start adding bits to the 70/71 to cover cuts to other routes, say even more of Cheslyn Hay, then it's gonna make it even worse