West Midlands bus route 76

West Midlands bus route 76 is a bus route between Solihull and the QE Hospital in Birmingham running via Shirley, Kings Heath and Selly Park. The service is operated by National Express West Midlands and runs every 20 minutes Monday to Saturday daytimes, and every 30 minutes Sundays and evenings. The service is usually operated by Dennis Trident ALX400 double decker buses and is operated by NXWMs Yardley Wood garage.

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History

Solihull to Robin Hood Island via Marshall Lake Road has been served by a bus route since the 1920s (see history of service 6) and from 1928 Highfield Road, Hall Green was served by Birmingham City Transport cross-city service 29 (later 29 outbound / 30 inbound) to Yardley Wood Station, however WMPTE curtailed this service in 1971 and all but eliminated it shortly afterward (although a city service was retained on Robin Hood Lane thanks to service 29A, latter 90/91, and which is today’s service 5).

The first time Shirley and Kings Heath were linked by a direct bus service was June 1975, 18 months after WMPTE had taken over Midland Red services in Solihull, when service 167 was introduced. Just 5 months later the service was re-routed to also serve Solihull, like its predecessor running via Maypole, and now numbered 185. Around 1980 the service was re-numbered again to service 164 (see history of service 49). In 1979 WMPTE discontinued the handful of remaining 29 journeys by which time service 151 Solihull to Yardley Wood Station via Streetsbrook Road had been introduced, commencing in 1977, although by 1980 most of these journeys were running as 152 through to Yardley Wood bus garage. Post de-regulation service 152 was tendered which hence saw a number of operators providing the service until it was discontinued in the 1990s.

From 1935 Kings Heath to Selly Oak was served by BCT service 26, although most journeys were incorporated into service 2B Kings Heath to Hagley Road, Edgbaston (‘Ivy Bush’) via the QEH from 1939. From 1957 the through route was renumbered 2 with shorts 2A Kings Heath to QEH, 2B to Selly Oak (Bournebrook) and later a 2C to Selly Oak triangle. In 1967 all 2 journeys were curtailed to what had been the 2C short but then the route was re-extended to the QEH, at least at certain times of the day, from Apr 1968 until Jan 1972. WMPTE eventually extended the 2 again in 1980(?) but this time to Weoley Castle.

Despite being well developed since the 1950s, and today enjoying a service provision of six buses an hour, it is surprising that Hollybank Road in Kings Heath had no bus service until 1985 (the nearest routes being the Outer Circle to the north and the 18 to the south) when WMPTE belatedly introduced ‘shoppers service’ 163 running Mon to Fri mid-morning to mid-afternoon between Kings Heath and Yardley Wood garage via Chinn Brook Road and School Road. A year later a Saturday service was introduced.

Hollybank Road and Chinn Brook Road received a full daytime service from January 1987 when West Midlands Travel combined service 2 with service 164 (Kings Heath to Yardley via Maypole and Solihull [which briefly operated as the 162 at the end of 1986]) except rather than running direct to Maypole, service 163 was also subsumed plus a service to Highters Heath Road and Glenavon Road provided for the first time. This new service was numbered 69 and resulted in quite a meandering tour of south & east Birmingham and Solihull for any passengers riding end to end. The Sunday service initially ran Weoley Castle to Kings Heath only but was later extended to Maypole. In 1997 the service moved off School Road in Yardley Wood to Glastonbury Road, as well as the Sunday service being extended to Solihull. East and south of Kings Heath what was the route of service 69 is today service 27. The route of todays 76 between Kings Heath and Shirley can be traced back to independent operator Your Bus.

In 1989, Your Bus (Smiths Coaches [Shenington] Ltd), who had been operating bus services in south Birmingham since late 1987, introduced a ‘South Birmingham Circular’ service. The service was numbered C6Y and A6Y with clockwise journeys operating from Birmingham city centre via Warwick Road to Solihull, then the current 76 route to Kings Heath, the Outer Circle route to Cotteridge, the 18 route to Northfield, and Bristol Road back to the city centre. Both clockwise and reverse anticlockwise journeys ran Monday to Saturday daytimes and at a frequency of every 20 minutes. The service clearly attracted patronage as it continued unchanged even after West Midlands Travel bought out Your Bus in 1993.

In 1996 WMT rebranded the Your Bus subsidiary as Travel Your Bus and a year(?) later cut most of the city centre journeys. One journey an hour via Warwick Road was initially retained running Birmingham to Northfield via Solihull, Kings Heath and Cotteridge, numbered 39Y, with the remaining two journeys an hour running between Solihull and Cotteridge and numbered 6Y. However by 1999 the 39Y journeys had been discontinued and the 6Y was extended north of Solihull to terminate at the airport. In 2001 the Travel Your Bus brand was absorbed into the main Travel West Midlands fleet. All use of Y suffixes were discontinued so the 6Y was renumbered A6. At the same time both ends of the route were curtailed, the service now running Kings Heath to Damsonwood. A few years late the western end of the route was re-extended west of Kings Heath but this time to serve Brandwood End (Doverley Road) before terminating at Pool Farm. In 2006 the A6 was renumbered 76. The number had been available since 1991 when service 101 to Handsworth adopted its current number, WMT having used the 76 number from October 1986 when combining WMPTE services 70 & 96. In BCT days 76 had been used for occasional journeys on the Soho Road corridor.

As part of the Solihull bus network review of January 2009, the 76 was again curtailed at Solihull as well as at Brandwood End, however it was the South Birmingham bus network review of October 2009 that saw the 76 adopt its current form. It was recognised that improved links with the QEH from south birmingham and Solihull would benefit passengers, however rather than just divert the western end of the 69, it was the 76 that took over the 69 route west of Kings Heath (along with the re-routing to the QEH rather than Weoley Castle) thus providing a more direct route to the hospital from Solihull and Shirley as well as the service gaining a full evening and Sunday service. The revised service also reinstated the Kings Heath to QEH link that had existing in the form of service 2 in the Birmingham City Transport era.

A final minor change occurred in 2016 when southbound journeys joined those northbound in using Coronation Road and Bournebrook Road rather than the southern half of Dawlish Road in Selly Oak. Northbound journeys had made this change in 1994(?) given the impossibility of buses passing where parking is permitted on both sides of the road, however there had remained issues with buses still unable to pass other vehicles.

Links


 * National Express West Midlands
 * Network West Midlands area bus maps
 * Bus Routes of Solihull

Other Photos


 * WMPTE service 185 - The BMMO S22 was a Midland Red built bus and this vehicle had transferred to WMPTE as part of the takeover by the PTE of services in Solihull.
 * WMPTE service 2
 * WMPTE service 163 - The use of 'via Solihull' on the display blind of this bus is misleading as the service only ran between Yardley Wood and Kings Heath.
 * Your Bus service (A)6Y
 * WMT YB service C6Y
 * TYB service 6Y in garage - Although painted in TYB orange this bus is still displaying a TWM sticker in the windscreen. Here is another Leyland Lynx fully fleetnamed as a TYB.
 * TWM service 69
 * TWM service A6
 * TWM service 76 (1)
 * TWM service 76 (2)
 * NXWM service 76