National Express Coventry

National Express Coventry

A National Express Coventry bus in Travel Coventry branding
Founded	9 December 2002 (spun out of Travel West Midlands)
Headquarters	Coventry, England
Locale	Coventry
Service area	Coventry and Warwickshire
Service type	Urban and interurban bus services
Destinations	Coventry, Balsall Common, Bedworth, Kenilworth, Keresley Village and Leamington Spa
Fleet	151
Operator	National Express Group
Web site	Travel Coventry

The previous Travel Coventry logo.

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 majority of the vehicle fleet is still in Travel Coventry livery.

History

In 26 October 1986 West Midlands Travel Ltd came into existence, and stems from the 1986 deregulation of the bus industry in England and Wales. It was previously the bus operations of the West Midlands Passenger Transport Executive (WMPTE) which had originally been the separate operations of the Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Walsall, West Bromwich and Coventry Corporations. Then from April 1995 the company was purchased by the National Express Group and in September 1996 was re-branded to trade under the name Travel West Midlands. On 9 December 2002 the Coventry depot attained a more local identity and began trading as Travel Coventry and from 4 February 2008 National Express Coventry confirmed as the new name for Travel Coventry.

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. A network review took place in the first quarter of 2006 which resulted in many routes being revised, removed or introduced from 2 April 2006, then after two months of extensive service monitoring, reliability checks and public feedback thereafter National Express Coventry tweaked some services to further improve the quality of service to their customers.

Vehicle types

The following table is a summary of the current passenger service fleet which totals 151 vehicles :

Chassis	Bodywork	Quantity	Seating	Other Info	Typical routes	Image
Optare Solo	Optare	4	27/29	"Mini" single deck bus	11 14
Volvo B6LE	Wright Crusader	6	37	"Midi" compact single deck bus	42 801
Mercedes-Benz O405N	Mercedes-Benz	39	43	Full sized single deck bus	1 2 5 7 10 15 19 19W 19X 23 23C 34 75 81 81E 81W
Scania OmniLink K230UB	Scania	15	43	Full sized single deck bus	20 30A 30C 40 50 60
Dennis Trident 2 *	Alexander ALX400 or TransBus ALX400	47	75	Double deck bus - 23 of these have bodywork under the Alexander brand and 24 of these have bodywork under the TransBus brand (different only in name)	3 3A 4 4A 12 32 32C 33 36
Volvo B7TL **	TransBus ALX400	10	74	Double deck bus
Volvo B7TL	Wright Eclipse Gemini	10	72	Double deck bus	13 13A
Mercedes-Benz O405GN	Mercedes-Benz	10	59	Articulated single deck bus (also called a "bendy bus" or "bendibus")	21 21C 21W
Mercedes-Benz O530 Citaro	Mercedes-Benz	10	56	Articulated single deck bus (also called a "bendy bus" or "bendibus")	27

Table footnotes:

* Two offside seats in front of stairs on upper deck otherwise similar to Volvo B7TL with TransBus ALX400 bodywork

** Four offside seats in front of stairs on upper deck otherwise similar to Dennis Trident 2 chassis with Alexander ALX400 or TransBus ALX400 bodywork

As of July, 2009 all of National Express Coventry's buses are of easy access type.

Therefore, a variety of bus types are used within National Express Coventry, including double-decks, single-decks, articulated 'bendy' buses, and mini-buses.^[2]

Route lists

Main article: List of National Express Coventry bus routes

Following successful service reviews in West Midlands areas, consultations are currently under way for a review of bus services in the Coventry area, which is scheduled for 26 Feb 2012.^[3]

PrimeLines

Main article: PrimeLines (Coventry)

See also

• List of bus operators of the United Kingdom

References

1. ^ National Express Group - "New brand, new name, new era"
2. ^ http://www.ukbuses.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/fleet/nxwm.pdf Unofficial NXWM fleetlist
3. ^ http://www.networkwestmidlands.com/BusReview/Coventrybusnetworkreview.aspx

External links

• National Express Coventry website