Coventry Buses - past and present

Any compulsory redundancy situation is horrible and most companies seem to handle it very badly. I was at Alfred Herberts in 1970, when the first we shopfloor workers knew about the company's plans to get rid of a substantial number of us was a report in the Birmingham Mail; I was at Webster and Bennetts when the asset strippers embarked on a long programme of redundancies that resulted in the closure of the company; and I was working in VSEL's Barrow-in-Furness shipyard when the management reduced the workforce from 16,000 to just over 2,000 - in a town with a total population of 70,000! But I must say that your dad's experience sets a new benchmark for brutality. I'm not surprised that his health suffered after that experience. I wonder if anyone has carried out a sustained and serious study of the physical and psychological effects of large-scale redundancy programmes on workers, their families and the wider community.

Hi The one crumb of hope at least with transport is that at present & the near future, every moving vehicle at least requires a driver. The technology has yet to be devised where vehicles can be driven remotely from the far east, or several vehicles driven by one driver. I know this is the statement of the obvious, but other than on-site construction, it is about the only industry that is at least safe for the time being in that way. In some places, even conductors have been re-introduced. Cambridgeshire have introduced a busway, a more forward version of what was tried in B'ham, & I wonder if that is the thin end of the wedge for some auto-pilot developement. Who knows what the next one hundred years will bring in Coventry.

We used to take the 22 bus to town from Proffitt Avenue through Sewall Highway and Blackberry Lane and then Swan Lane and Harnall Lane to Stoney Stanton Rd and round the Swanswell and up into Broadgate. We always went upstairs because at the junction of Swancroft Road and Swan Lane the corner house had a model village in the garden. Also, for many years there was a large German bomb leaning against the house wall. It had reputedly been taken from the nearby canal after a raid on the munitions works in Red Lane and/or Herberts. Always an exciting bus ride for us kids.

I remember it well, and it was a big one too. The bomb seemed huge to us as kids. Any idea what happened to it.It was there in the 60s.

I'd like (In an ideal world) to see a tram system. I've lived in a city with a tram system and although they're expensive and time consuming to put in, they are excellent to use and can carry a lot more passengers than buses. The routes also seem to attract investment as well. The best aspect is that you don't need timetables - the trams just pop along at regular intervals (I sometimes wait 30-40 minutes for a bus to turn up!). I got so used to just nipping on and off trams to get around I missed them! I'm not sure if Coventry is busy enough to need a tram system, though. And I doubt the money would ever be made available to put one in. Here's the Cambridge busway: LINK Interesting to note that villages on the routes saw increased trade.

Hello all A few years ago, a tramway was proposed in Coventry, to run in the Earlsdon area, but there was a lot of local opposition to the developement. Quote from one of the comments to the public enquiry--: " High investment in public transport results in high attractivity to business, and now i've said that dont try and moan about the lack of a tram system in Coventry, the Earlsdonites rejected that back in the 1990s and now looking at other cities in the country including Leeds, the DfT just wont fund any further schemes like that unless the council's find

Rob, when I was a kid all the buses had signs stating " No spitting on the bus".

Hi all I remember the notice very well. I am not boasting about this as what I did was a vile act, along with a few others at the time when I was about age nine. I carefully removed the P from the upstairs notice on several buses, but never got caught.

Hi Rob. I did the same kind of stupid thing on some none Coventry buses, where I removed the S in seats, so the notice read 'this bus eats 56 people'. Stratford Blue had those notices. That was my vile dry humour when I was nine.

So that's where "Bob" got them all from! Stratford Daily Post announced today that local Transport Police have been able to solve a number of cases of vandalism after the discovery of new evidence......

Hi all Can anyone help with identifying the operator of this bus, which we are sure is photographed in Nuneaton. What is a bus in 1918 doing in Nuneaton with an advert for a piano shop in Coventry? My builder friend came across it when the photo was being thrown out, during a building renovation in Nuneaton.