Coventry Buses - past and present

NX Coventry service changes from Tuesday 4th January. Also the X1 does its occasional swap from Sunday 2nd January and runs every 20 minutes Monday-Saturday. Sunday stays every 30 minutes. The short workings from Birmingham to the Airport are withdrawn.

Hi all, hi Peter, I mention you in particular, as you may be able to verify or correct my stats, regards our city bus operation. The Coventry transport undertaking which evolved into Coventry-West Midlands, & now National Express, the stats are quite revealing. In 1965/6 Over 400 buses, adorned our city, mostly double deck, rear exit, but changes in vehicle lighting regulations amongst other things, rendered the fleet numbers 1 - 165, too expensive to modify, being around eighteen years old so were withdrawn from service, just as the new front entrance "mono" operation buses had started to arrive. In 1974.. Just over three hundred buses made up the Coventry fleet. In 2021.. Just over one hundred & fifty. In 2022.. We wait & see (I'm being told 130 by the end of this year.) Bus operators have quite a dilemma to decide routes. A fast straight route or a slow call everywhere spaghetti route taking a week to get anywhere. The Covid special subsidy comes to an end soon, maybe I will have to buy a tricycle.

In 1965 Coventry Transport had around 250 buses. 1-165 had been progressively withdrawn from 1959. Buses have to be re-certified every 7 years and many operators chose to withdraw at year 14. It was nothing to do with lighting or anything else. By 1974 the number was more like 200 and at that point they were absorbed into WMPTE. Peak passenger loadings were in the period 1949-1955 and declining bus usage, driven by rise in car ownership, led to reduced buses. Today's buses in Coventry cover more mileage than historically and, whether 130 or 150, cover the same mileage as c.200 would have done in the mid 60s. Coventry was the first in the country to have 2 door double deckers with one man operation. One of these is preserved in Nottinghamshire.

Currently 177 vehicles according to bustimes.org. This includes 10 electric buses from 2020. There are several new (<3 years old) diesel buses. I don't know if these will be re-allocated to other depots, or kept for longer routes (Leamington/Rugby/Nuneaton).

Not so easy to give an answer, as a year is a long time and the number of buses in the fleet did change. However I can give you this: January 1965, there were 349 buses, of which 338 were Double-deck & 11 were Single-deck. October 1966, the fleet was now only 308 strong, of which, 286 were Double-deck & 22 Single-deck. Coventry Transport to the WMPTE on 1st April 1974, 305 buses, of which 301 were Double-deck, 2 were Single-deck, 1 was a Ford Transit Mini-bus with the last being a Ford coach. Not included above, but an additional 5 Double-deck buses also transferred over to the WMPTE, these being in the non-passenger service fleet. As for the modern day bus fleet, I've no idea, not of interest to me.

Hi all, New bus interchange.

Anybody remember the Corporation double decker bus crashing into the overhang on the Lanchester building on the corner of Jordan Well and Cox Street, ripping off some of the top deck.

From the CET:

I've photographed this bus before, but it's the first time with the words 'Coventry Transport' on the side, rather than 'National Express Coventry' (which it still displays on the front).

Have fun with this It tracks buses in real time, although there is a lag of about two stops. May be helpful for those who use public transport to get around.

Very similar to the Network-Rail system. I'm only just back home from London, where I tracked the progress of my trains in much the same way in both directions.

Here's a view taken in Pool Meadow bus station in 1968, which I was telling Rob Orland about yesterday and about all the open space in the background there, with Ford Street (including that lovely School of Art building), sadly all demolished and confined to history, but which also shows the Ring Road in this part of the city centre yet to be built. The doctors' surgery on the corner of White Street and Bird Street can be seen in the background on the right there!

This is a normal National Express bus newly painted in the old Coventry Transport colours, seen here at the Tile Hill terminus. It seems to be a regular on the 24 route, which starts at Pool Meadow and runs to Tile Hill via the rail station, Baginton, Bubbenhall, Stoneleigh, Kenilworth and Burton Green, taking an hour and a half. Although you can break the journey at any stop, take care, the frequency is hourly or two-hourly. Amazing value for a £4 day saver including another bus back to your starting point, and free if you have a senior pass. When we tried it there were no other passengers and the bus drove past every stop but one. I'm sure the service will soon be withdrawn with so few passengers. I don't know if this is a replacement for the double decker that has been painted in similar 'heritage' colours since 2012, pictured in an earlier post.

One of the pre-war Daimlers, body rebuilt at Keresley (Watery Lane). The skill of those engineers, making do with post war shortages, just beggars belief. "This bit nearly fits, Harry". "Then give it some stick".

The bus was rebuilt at Charles Roe in Leeds, not at Keresley, around 1950/1951. The give away is the back offside curved window, a Roe trademark. I own EKV966 from the same batch, which had the same rebuild.