I have received the following information off National Express West Midlands (NXWM), thought I’d share it with you.

Timetable changes for September 2020

National Express West Midlands has made changes to bus timetables across Birmingham and the Black Country on Sunday 30 August 2020, ready for September’s return to school.

We are putting more buses into service, making more double deckers available and changing timetables so people can safely social distance. These changes make 90,000 more seats available every day – and we still have our fleet of sweeper buses on standby at various locations so that if a route or location gets busy, we can send reinforcements.

Other operators’ bus services also changed on Sunday 30 August – please see networkwestmidlands.com for details.

Dedicated school-only services

National Express West Midlands will also be running new dedicated school-only bus services this September. Members of the public will not be able to get on these buses.

These dedicated school-only buses are extra to normal services, which will be running at their normal frequencies.

The government has given bus operators specific guidelines about dedicated school-only bus services. These buses are for schoolchildren only, so the social distancing rules for travelling on public transport don’t apply.

New route from Walsall to Wolverhampton

From Tuesday 1 September 2020, National Express West Midlands will be introducing a new bus route between Walsall bus station and Wolverhampton bus station.

The express X529 service will follow much of the route of the popular 529 between Walsall and Wolverhampton (apart from the section between Portobello island and junction 10 of the M6, where the X529 will run non stop along the Black Country Route and Keyway). The X529 will be 10 minutes quicker from end to end as it stops at fewer stops.

Staying safe on board

Some people may not have been on a bus since March, and we understand that in these weird times, doing things for the first time since lockdown can make people nervous.

Of course at National Express, we are still all about safety. We have redesigned our cleaning regimes to focus on shared surfaces; we have teams of extra cleaners who jump on the buses while they’re stopped in city centres; and all buses are cleaned overnight by “fogging” – an aerosol-based disinfection containing a high-performance antiviral solution that settles in the hard-to-reach areas.