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you have a fort connection from Buckland end with the 96

I was referring from the other direction (Acocks Green towards Buckland End) but point is taken.

Regarding discussion of the 41 (QEH to Heartlands) happening in the July changes topic:

New contract is out for tender, due to commence 2nd November 2025. This is what I have been told:

Current route between QE Hospital and Heartlands Hospital stays the same. Service extends from Heartlands across to Buckland End. This new section of route incorporates part of the former 93 service withdrawn in 2022.

Does the frequency go up, as always thought QE Hospital - Acocks Green could move to and sustain a half hourly frequency?

As for Heartlands Hospital - Buckland End, it's an interesting proposal, although if the 93 was unsustainable, would this additional mileage, move the 41 into a similar position? Buckland End doesn't seem to be the biggest traffic objective in the network and wonder if an extension to Castle Vale via The Fort or even just to The Fort would be a viable alternative?

It's intriguing to me that Kevs Cars and Coaches and Silverline Landflight didn't make any submission.

I'd like to see the return of the 440 (Perry Barr to Bearwood) but operating via the Midlands Metropolitan University Hospital site on its way into Bearwood. Two buses could provide an hourly service although depending on the choke point that is Villa Cross, you'd probably need a third and extended running times but still on an hourly frequency.

Alternatively, it would be good to see the return of the Solihull to Redditch service (165 or 175?) as seems strange the distance is under 10 miles but can't be done by bus and rail is a poor option for this journey. You could probably extend it into the Airport via Damsonwood as well on a 2 or 3 PVR for an hourly service.

The main case for franchising in the West Midlands is the principle that there should be public control, and that in itself is not going to set the world alight.

I'd bet my house that if you stopped anyone in the street and asked out of the following three (Buses, Electricity and Water), which should come back into public control the soonest, buses would be the last of the three, most of the time. 

I also think that failures such as opening stations on the Camp Hill Line on time, the delays to rebuilding Dudley Bus Station into a modern interchange and getting the Metro to Dudley and beyond, amongst other public transport capital schemes, means that people probably are inclined to believe that public control isn't the way forward and have either not left their opinion on the consultation at all or have used alternate means to disapprove (via local councillors, letters to TfWM etc), which may not get factored into the results at all.

Proof that nobody cares at all what happens to the bus network if a mere 0.5% of the population even bothered to answer.

I think it's rather more nuanced than that, to be honest. The fact that things such as the bin strike in Birmingham for example, are happening at the same time as this consultation have probably meant that people aren't as interested in the buses as opposed to the mountains of rubbish sprouting all over Birmingham. Additionally, the length of the documents made available to the public are probably too large for your average person on the street to want to read and so, they've shied away from having an opinion. Couple that with the fact that the new Metro mayor doesn't seem to be pushing for views on this via local media, radio phone-ins etc and I think you may find most people don't even know there's a consultation on. Personally, I've had this when I've worked in operators where face to face consultations are scheduled at 14:00 on a Tuesday, so you get sparse attendance and subsequent feedback due to people being at work, on the way to start the school run or concessionary passengers leaving the network before schools throw out, amongst other reasons.

It may also be for the fact and it may be an unpopular opinion, that for an urban conurbation the size of the West Midlands, most bus passengers have access to reasonable services, with decent spans of operation most days of the week and with the exception of things such as fares, Sunday provision and punctuality etc, are happy or at least satisfied with what they've got. That's not to say there's not room for improvement but for £4.80, you can purchase an NBus ticket and in theory travel from Pattingham near Wolverhampton to Coventry on as many buses as you'd want/need to use across multiple operators. I've travelled in Yorkshire towns where £6 is more the norm for a day ticket and even then, you can't travel outside of city limits, yet alone across county lines as in the West Midlands. People always moan when services get cut and the West Midlands has seen that as has everywhere else but most of the services cut have either been withdrawals of commercial duplicate routes (see Claribels 55 as an example), withdrawals of unsustainable tendered provision (such as the 93 in Birmingham) or the collapse of operators altogether (remember AM-PM travel, GRS Travel and others of the same ilk).

The way some of the narrative on franchising is spouted, you'd think NXWM and Diamond are the two biggest robber barons out there. However, unlike areas such as West Yorkshire, where Arriva looks to be running the clock, the operators of the West Midlands for the most part, provide in my opinion a reasonable level of service over a rather large area, with signs of investment in fleet, trying to solve the driver shortage and publicity and that may explain why the public response to the consultation is so lackadaisical. 

As a depot manager once said to me, "Passengers never praise us when a service is 98% on time, most of the year. It's the 2% when it goes wrong, sometimes outside of our control, such as roadworks, when people bang on to their MP's and Councillors about the old days and Midland Red making sure everything was punctual through their rose tinted spectacles."

Personally, as someone who has worked on both sides of the coin (for operators and TfWM), I think several issues around franchising haven't been answered and some of the reasons for franchising being pursued are being presented behind smoke and mirrors.

The franchising assessment indicates that even with franchising, passenger numbers are envisaged to fall. If that is the case, the taxpayer is being asked to 'buy' a system that even with all the money being invested, won't improve and in turn, would probably cost more money to prop up. No one in business rightly buys a business in insolvency so why should the taxpayer be asked to do this with regards to the bus network?

Franchising is meant to improve journey times however TfWM and Local Authorities already control highways and various aspects of the road system, such as parking enforcement so how franchising improves that is something I can't see. If franchising isn't coupled with serious improvements to both parking enforcement and introduction bus priority in areas where it's technically feasible but politically distasteful (such as Soho Road, where it's dual carriageway for the majority of the way but is parked on, in sometimes a haphazard way, impacting the 74's punctuality to name one area) then I can't see how franchising magically speeds up journey times. All I can see is an influx of additional buses into timetables to keep frequencies up, which brings me onto my next point...

Driver shortage. Whilst this may be turning around, under franchising that doesn't magically go away. Coupled with the fact that the West Midlands Combined Authority has some levers it can pull to improve this (employment programs, education etc), it's easy to say 'we control the network so more buses should run' but if you don't address this problem, I can envisage a scenario where the operators are short of drivers and can point to the franchising authority in this case as not creating a system where adequate drivers are available across the network for employment.

The documents to me seem long winded and designed to assure a 'yes' to franchising, regardless of whether this is the best option, solely based on it being a Labour policy and nothing more substantial than that.