National Express Coventry

National Express Coventry is the current trading name and brand name of West Midlands Travel Ltd (part of the National Express Group), a company which operates bus services from its depot in the city of Coventry in the West Midlands region of England. All of West Midlands Travel Ltd other bus depots in the West Midlands operate under the name National Express West Midlands. National Express Coventry previously operated under the trading names of Travel Coventry, Travel West Midlands and West Midlands Travel. The vast majority of the buses are still in Travel Coventry livery.

History

Future - National Express Group re-branding

Within the next few months National Express Coventry will be applying a temporary logo to several of its vehicles to highlight to those unaware the change from 'Travel Coventry' into 'National Express Coventry'.^[1]

The new livery will be applied to vehicles when they go in for maintenance. It is believed that National Express aim to have over half of its vehicles in the livery by February 2009.

Reliability

National Express Coventry have been subject to many complaints over the reliability of some of their bus services. Complaints are frequently heard from students who claim that buses routinely just do not turn up when they are expected to.

National Express Coventry has become the target of critics regarding the reliability of certain services in Coventry. After major improvements and refreshment to the Coventry bus network in April 2006 and two months of extensive service monitoring, reliability checks and public feedback National Express Coventry has responded to the findings from these conducts and are making some minor changes in line with this to adjust the services, this will help improve the service quality they provide to their customers.

Vehicle types

The following table is a summary of the current passenger service fleet which totals 160 vehicles :

Chassis	Bodywork	Quantity	Seating	Other Info
Optare Solo	Optare	7	27-29	"Mini" single deck bus
Volvo B6LE	Wright Crusader	8	37	"Midi" compact low floor single deck bus
Mercedes-Benz O405N	Mercedes-Benz	54	43	Full sized low floor single deck bus
MCW Metrobus	MCW	11	73	"Old" step entry double deck bus
Dennis Trident 2 *	Alexander ALX400 or TransBus ALX400	40	75	Low floor double deck bus - 21 of these have bodywork under the Alexander brand and 19 of these have bodywork under the TransBus brand (different only in name)
Volvo B7TL **	TransBus ALX400	10	74	Low floor double deck bus
Volvo B7TL	Wright Eclipse Gemini	10	72	Low floor double deck bus
Mercedes-Benz O405GN	Mercedes-Benz	10	59	Articulated single deck bus (also called a "bendy bus" or "bendibus")
Mercedes-Benz O530 Citaro	Mercedes-Benz	10	56	Articulated single deck bus (also called a "bendy bus" or "bendibus")

Vehicle photographs

<gallery> Image:Bus number 14 5u07.JPG|A Optare Solo single deck bus working on route 14. Image:Bus 801 17u07.JPG|A Volvo B6LE / Wright Crusader single deck bus working on route 801. Image:Coventry travel bus32 27a07.JPG|A Mercedes-Benz O405N single deck bus working on route 32 in Gosford Green, Coventry. Image:Bus route19 18a07.JPG|A MCW Metrobus double decker bus working on route 19 in Canley, Coventry. Image:Bus 13A 12u07.JPG|A Dennis Trident 2 / Alexander ALX400 double decker bus working on route 13A. Image:Travel_coventry_no13_26l07.JPG|A Volvo B7TL / Wright Eclipse Gemini working on route 13. Image:Bendybus 21 18s07.JPG|A Mercedes-Benz O405GN articulated bus (or bendy bus) working on route 21. Image:Travel coventry bendibus 13 26l07.JPG|A Mercedes-Benz O530 Citaro bendibus working on route 27. </gallery>

Route lists

PrimeLines

The PrimeLines^[2] initiative is a Ł42 million budgeted scheme which aims to improve all aspects of bus journeys on a number of selected showcase routes radiating out from the city centre of Coventry. Bus stops will be wheelchair friendly, with raised kerbs for easier boarding. New shelters, that are airier and well lit. Eventually many of the shelters will have electronic passenger information installed, so waiting passengers will know when the next bus is due. To improve reliability, the routes will have bus priority measures implemented at traffic signals and junctions, and where possible there will be lengths of bus lanes to get the bus past general traffic queues.

On the "University Corridor" route (number 12 bus), bus lanes and gates have been instituted in various places, and it is estimated that at peak hours the total time for the full journey between the city and Warwick University could be reduced by approximately 1 minute 50 seconds. However, the plans for this were finalized before the Council obtained a report by Jacobs UK Ltd. The report concluded that there were only two "pinch points" on the route,^[3] and neither of these has been given any bus priority measures, whereas measures have been put in place where they are not deemed necessary. The bus gates are also interesting in that they often turn red for other traffic when no bus or taxi is approaching.

The PrimeLines route linking Tile Hill with the University Hospital at Walsgrave has been implemented, and buses serving this route have now been cut from three per hour to two per hour. The PrimeLines route along the Ansty Road, involving as it did the confiscation of private frontages to houses on Ansty Road, amid considerable protest from homeowners, has also attracted controversy.

The PrimeLines scheme is based on bus showcase schemes previously tried in Bristol and Birmingham, none of which delivered significant sustained increase in bus usage or any fall in congestion or total car use. One of the first bus priority measures for the Coventry scheme, a bus gate at the junction of The Butts and Albany road, had to be dismantled after it caused serious congestion problems for traffic leaving the city centre or coming off the inner ring road.^[4] ^[5] There are reports of increased congestion in traffic coming towards the city centre along the Butts, as the inbound bus lane took out one of three existing lanes, forcing traffic that had used the left-hand lane with the intention of turning left onto the ring road to add to traffic in the middle lane, and then hold up middle lane traffic as vehicles queue in that lane to join the few yards of free road at the end of the bus lane available for cars needing to turn left at the roundabout.

Coventry City Council approval of PrimeLines was secured in part with a claim that congestion would be reduced and that there would be a 25% increase in bus use on all PrimeLines routes,^[6] but the claim is wholly unsupported by any evidence, and tends to be contradicted by experience of bus showcase schemes elsewhere in the country: the best single route ever has managed a 25% increase in patronage (though it is not clear how this was calculated), however this seems to have come from increased use by non-car owners; and no better than a 6% shift has been recorded between modes of transport, and there is no evidence that this is sustained.^[7] Centro?s own figures indicate that bus showcase schemes offer at best a 15% increase in usage on those specific routes where every conceivable improvement is implemented, with no indication of how much of this comes from a shift from private cars to buses.^[8]

There appears to be no evidence available as to whether drivers of other vehicles, held up by bus priority measures and the general congestion caused by them, try to make up time by driving faster or otherwise more hazardously when the opportunity presents itself, nor on whether such measures may aggravate the phenomenon of "road rage".

The PrimeLines consortium held a public consultation on elements of the University Corridor PrimeLines scheme, in a bus on a car park between the back of the Clarendon public house and what was then the building site for a new block of flats, during August 2007. According to a report to the Council?s Cabinet, around 100 people attended this and 29 people were in support of the bus lane scheme. A petition against the scheme totalling 1,928 signatures was also received by the Council.^[9]