On Thursday 6th November, James (VP Democracy and Development) and Alijah (President) met with Stagecoach to raise student feedback about their services. We appreciated Stagecoach sitting down with us and the University’s Transport Team to so we could directly communicate the level of student frustration with their service. As officers, we’ll continue to lobby, listen and campaign to get you a bus service you can rely on, in line with our manifesto commitments. Thank you to everyone who responded to our callout on Instagram and Xiaohongshu (RedNote), it was massively helpful in getting our points across. 

With regards to the core issues of reliability and frequency of buses, we made little progress. One positive to note is that as part of the electrification of buses, Stagecoach had been experiencing issues with their charging capacity leading to more frequent constraints on the level of service. This should be fixed before the end of the month – in our next meeting, we’ll make sure this extra flexibility has been used on the routes to and from campus. We received a specific query on the frequency of Stagecoach’s Coventry services (60 and 87) - unfortunately this is dictated by Transport for West Midlands. Additionally, Stagecoach said one of the issues with capacity at peak times is the inability to keep buses ‘on hold’ at campus due to a lack of space at the Interchange. We hope to explore alternatives to get around this problem with the University. 

We raised concerns from students based at Gibbet Hill regarding them not being able to get on the bus due to it being full when it comes from the Interchange. The two solutions proposed by Stagecoach were either to have buses leave the Interchange with spare capacity, which could lead to more issues if they then don’t fill up at Gibbet Hill. Secondly, they proposed students get on the bus going the other way (to campus) and then stay on it to Leamington. Stagecoach also maintainedthat the cost of the pass, when considering the number of journeys taken, is reasonable. 

More positively, Stagecoach are now actively investigating the concern we raised that late-night services are stopping at Parish Church rather than continuing. If anyone has experienced/does experience this in this term, do let James know with as much detail as possible (vpdd@warwicksu.com). 

We’ll be meeting Stagecoach again in January, to follow up on the actions from Thursday. Additionally, we’ll be using the data from the University Transport Survey to press them your concerns regarding a lack of reliable and frequent buses – please keep an eye out for this when it releases in the coming weeks, and make sure you and your friends fill it out. It will be on both University comms and on the SU weekly email and social media. As always, please feel free to contact James (vpdd@warwicksu.com) and/or Alijah (president@warwicksu.com) to raise any questions, testimonials or specific concerns!