West Midlands Coventry Road bus corridor
The Coventry Road bus corridor is a group of services running along the Coventry Road (A45) in Birmingham, United Kingdom. The main services operating along this corridor are numbered 57, 58, 60 and 900.
57 / 58 / 60 Birmingham - Solihull / Birmingham International / Cranes Park
Service 57 and 57A links Birmingham with Solihull Train Station, service 58 links Birmingham to Birmingham International railway station and service 60 links Birmingham with Cranes Park. All services serve the Coventry Road. These services are operated by National Express West Midlands, and have suffered very little competition from other operators.
In 2003, a batch of 15 Dennis Tridents were branded for this route however since then 4 of these have had to be de-branded due to different services requiring them. As a result, it is not unusual to see Plaxton Presidents and on occasion Optare Spectras working. In August 2008, 4 more Dennis Tridents have been de-branded, with others half-way through the process.
The services all serve the areas of Bordesley, Small Heath, Hay Mills, Yardley and Sheldon whilst serving numerous supermarkets, St. Andrews football ground (Birmingham City football club) and 4 different interchanges.
900 Birmingham - Coventry
History of route
The route was originally operated by Midland Red as service number 159. On 3 December 1973, all routes within the West Midlands were passed to WMPTE, and this route was included.
On 26 January 1986 the service was extended from Birmingham via Halesowen to Hasbury, relaunched as a flagship Timesaver service and re-numbered 900. In 1988 the extension to the route was reverted back presumably because of the unreliability of such routes which traverse through a large busy city centre. (The Birmingham to Hasbury section became routes 19 & 19S which have since been withdrawn on 27 Apr 2008).
The 900 journey time was then 60 minutes end to end, in recent years however as a result of additional routing, more stopping places and congestion the end to end journey time has increased by around 40% which has made the service less attractive for those travelling between the two cities. Along with the withdrawal of the Hasbury section and the extended time on the 900 service, it has not shown good interest in the people who used them.
The latest alteration was to reduce it to every 30 minutes during the daytimes of Monday - Saturday. A 15 minute Monday - Friday peak time frequency. Finally the extension from Sheldon of service 58 during Monday - Saturday daytime was to fill the 30 minute gap between Birmingham Airport and Birmingham City Centre, in effect still providing 4 buses per hour during the off peak. To add to this: The Timesaver brand has also been phased out.
Pete's Travel used to operate one return journey from B'ham - Coventry as a positioning Journey to avoid dead mileage.