Following complaints about the bus service to and from campus, Charlton Sayer (Welfare and Campaigns Officer) has been working with Stagecoach to make improvements to the bus service.
Following complaints about the bus service to and from campus, particularly at peak times and on Wednesday nights after POP!, Charlton Sayer (Welfare and Campaigns Officer) has been working with Stagecoach to make improvements to the bus service.
Stagecoach have undertaken monitoring exercises in the week commencing 17th January to see how services have been operating, following the feedback that has been received. They are now aware of the long wait times, timetabling issues and lack of buses at peak times.
Many of these issues have been caused or compounded by driver absence due to Covid, full or missing buses resulting in increased wait times and other unrelated incidents (such as police activity), causing additional delays to the U1/U2 bus service. Services in Leamington town centre in particular were massively disrupted as a result of roadworks funnelling all cross-town traffic through the Bath Street/High Street junction.
As a result, Stagecoach have:
- Acknowledged that the performance of the U1/U2 route has not been satisfactory.
- Recruited over 80 new drivers, currently in various stages of training.
- Made changes to services and considering further changes, already having suspended the U12 from 22nd January (and reduced others elsewhere), to allow more drivers to be available to operate the U1/U2 service.
- Carried out monitoring of the POP! bus service, with duplicate buses scheduled for approx. 1.30am and 2.30am on Wednesday nights and queue management, enabling queues to be cleared.
- Committed to continuous monitoring of services, to ensure these actions flow through to improved performance on the ground and discussing the situation with both the University and the SU during regular meetings.
We would also like to encourage students to make use of Warwick’s West Midlands Bus On Demand service. It’s a Demand Responsive Transport (DRT) service that meets you wherever you are and bridges the gap between a bus and a taxi. Use code ‘Freshers21’ for two free rides.
As part of this service, Warwick are offering Ride Passes, which are bundles that entitle you to take individual journeys to any destination within the WM On Demand operational zone. For frequent riders, these offer a saving on individual journeys, especially if you are frequently making longer trips.