New cross-city bus services

[Tony]

No, I was just wandering why NX would think passengers on the 50 are unable to change buses, unlike other passengers on other routes in Birmingham.
And was only giving my opinion.

No-one is saying passengers on the 50 are less able than other routes, just a lot of people are put off by changing buses.

Why get out your car to get off the first bus you catch to walk in the rain to another that you don't know if will turn up.

Whereas if you have a through journey you know once you are on a bus you are dry and going where you need to go.

If you are such an expert on the bus industry why not come and apply for a job at one of the companies?

[MW]

No, I was just wandering why NX would think passengers on the 50 are unable to change buses, unlike other passengers on other routes in Birmingham.
And was only giving my opinion.

They're trying something different to promote and grow their business.

The end goal is always to increase passengers / revenue; whether that's lowering operating costs or making services more attractive.

They may not get it right all the time, but NXWM has recently been making more bold moves; something which I applaud them for.

[Busboy105]

Cross city services, in principle, are a good idea. In this example giving City Hospital much improved links to some of the busiest parts of South Birmingham, and linking the regenerated East Side with much more of the city centre and West Birmingham are a couple of other new links that would be beneficial.

The challenge as always with these, and the nail in the coffin for cross city routes in the past, is how to maintain reliability. The end to end routes would be massive, and presumably a huge challenge to manage effectively in practice.

Yes, cross city routes do work; it's a great way to link a part of a city for another but in cities like Birmingham it just won't work because of the insane amount of traffic. The only way that it can work if the council or TFWM implement bus measures or something else.

[Jack]

No, I was just wandering why NX would think passengers on the 50 are unable to change buses, unlike other passengers on other routes in Birmingham.
And was only giving my opinion.

I agree. It's not like the 50 and 82/87 don't stop more than 200 yards away at Moor Street... again what's wrong with walking a 2 minute walk? And I don't think combing the 50 and 87 would be great for the reliability, also I see the 89 will be getting left out... again! I'd understand if the 82/87 were confined to Colmore Row but they aren't... I do think the Colmore Row services should do a loop of the city instead of being shoved there away from the main centre. If only we still had Corporation Street still open to buses...
This will mean the likes of Tividale and Oldbury will suffer delays and long waits from buses stuck in Kings Heath and South Bham!

[Tony]

I agree. It's not like the 50 and 82/87 don't stop more than 200 yards away at Moor Street... again what's wrong with walking a 2 minute walk? And I don't think combing the 50 and 87 would be great for the reliability, also I see the 89 will be getting left out... again! I'd understand if the 82/87 were confined to Colmore Row but they aren't... I do think the Colmore Row services should do a loop of the city instead of being shoved there away from the main centre. If only we still had Corporation Street still open to buses...
This will mean the likes of Tividale and Oldbury will suffer delays and long waits from buses stuck in Kings Heath and South Bham!

I've just explained

[Jack]

I've just explained

And that is my own opinion on how diabolical it is. Cross city routes in Birmingham just don't work, look at the 66!

[Jack6101]

And that is my own opinion on how diabolical it is. Cross city routes in Birmingham just don't work, look at the 66!

But since then a lot of bus priorities have been added to the city or will be and also since the 82/7 got re routed in the city they seem to be doing better before and on time by the time I get off the 87 In tividale around 6pm

[Stu]

And that is my own opinion on how diabolical it is. Cross city routes in Birmingham just don't work, look at the 66!

Cross city routes at present 'don't work' because of the traffic congestion and bizarre road layouts and traffic flows.

But that's not to say that they couldn't work again, once BCC get to grips with the traffic congestion and alter some road layouts to improve the flow for buses.

And that's what the Birmingham Transport Plan is about, to make buses the 'king' of the roads again.

To be honest, my opinion is that it might be 'too soon' to even think about combining the 50 and 82/87 together, but certainly in a couple of years time we could start seeing more routes combined together to provide true 'cross-city' bus services.

[Pat]

Why have they chosen the 50 & 82/87 and not another route?

[paulb1973]

Cross-city routes are virtually the norm in Coventry and this pattern was formed well before WMPTE arrived, let alone WMT and its successors. Its only the longer distance services to the edge of the city and beyond that aren't (service 5 excepted after the Sept 2019 changes). Don't think there's much evidence that splitting or creating new links would make that much difference to overall reliability - but then Coventry is quite a bit smaller than the areas mentioned. 

[Stu]

Why have they chosen the 50 & 82/87 and not another route?

If you read back through this thread, you'll see that this is a 'rumour', and thus nothing has been oficially 'chosen'.

[Tony]

Why have they chosen the 50 & 82/87 and not another route?

No-one is saying they are for definite, but the Mayor has announced the intention for cross city services

[979]

No-one is saying they are for definite, but the Mayor has announced the intention for cross city services

[aSingh]

Which other routes could become cross city routes?

[Pat]

So now it has been announced, back to my original question of why they have chosen 50 & 82/87?