Hello everyone!
Soon you will all be returning to Leamington Spa, Coventry and campus, so we thought we'd take the opportunity to let you all know about a few changes to the bus services for the coming academic year.
Following several consecutive years of student-run campaigns (such as last year's "Taken For A Ride" campaign) complaining of poor prices and poorer service, the University has invested in a new bus service which will be running a service to and from Leamington to alleviate the pressure at peak times - hopefully, seeing "Sorry, Bus Full" will now become a rarity, rather than the norm!
You might have seen loads of orange buses on campus in the third term last year- these were part of the new service run by Travel de Courcey which has already been put in place for students in Coventry. This service will carry on and will be complemented by a new service between campus and Leamington. More information on the Leamington service, Coventry services, and fares can be found on the University website.
With regards to the new Leamington service, the basic headlines are that the bus will get you from Leamington (stopping at either the Parish Church or the Top of the Parade) to campus as quickly as possible, and will charge you £1 per journey if you buy the 10 journey ticket.
The service they will be running will start out being slightly restricted, but should be useful if you travel at the right time each day - the full service is detailed on the University website.
With regards to buses to Coventry, there are loads of services as you can tell from the above link. The W1 would probably be the most useful to know more about.
Do you travel to campus every day?
In this case the Stagecoach pass will almost certainly work out cheaper for you. BUT the Travel de Courcey buses will allow you travel for £1 if you show your Stagecoach pass, which could be useful if a bus goes past full and you're in a hurry!
Do you travel to campus 4 days or less out of the 5 and have no 9AM classes?
Then, this could be perfect for you, if you're willing to base your day around the times in the above timetable. Depending on how many days you are on campus it will save you some money compared to the Stagecoach buses, but obviously isn't as flexible!
Either way, it's probably a good idea to work out what is best for your weekly routine.
Based on your timetable, try working out how many buses you'll be taking each week, and when you'll be taking them and see what your best option is.
Our hope is that the new services, at the very least, help ease the 'peak hour' problems that students faced every morning and evening, making the commute a nightmare. The service, which is fairly flexible, will be looking at how they could improve its schedule (apart from the obvious 9am issue) and may well be used to get you guys back from our events late in the evening. If you have any thoughts feel free to contact any of your elected officers.
Aside from this, we're all getting really excited to have everyone back on campus and freshers kicking off.
Remember, coming soon we've got Sports Fair on the 4th October in the Sports Centre, and Societies Fair on the 5th and 6th October in the SU.
And to keep up to date with what your elected officers have been up to this summer, have a gander at our blog posts which we'll be adding to whenever we find the time to write something up!
See you all soon!
George Whitworth
Union Development Officer