Passengers complain West Bromwich bus service is 'the worst in the Black Country'

Horror stories including cold passengers being stranded in the rain and buses regularly disappearing were shared by passengers after being asked to rate the service.

Friar Park Councillor Simon Hackett said: "Residents have said to me it’s the worst in the Black Country.

"Residents have been telling me that this service which runs between West Bromwich to Wednesbury is often late and on many occasions buses are taken off and you are left waiting for ages."

He added: "Residents have been raising complaints with me a lot lately and have asked me to take up these complaints with the bus companies."

The number 40 is run by National Express West Midlands and Diamond Bus Company.

Councillor Hackett said: "I think we all agree that bus drivers have done a fantastic job keeping us going during the pandemic but residents have suggested to me that the service can be managed better."

Councillor Hackett's post touched a nerve with residents and within hours of asking for comments about the number 40, nearly 30 people had replied with examples of when they had been let down.

Passenger Susan Cooper, who has arthiritis and relies on the bus to go shopping, said: "It's a terrible service, not unusual for three buses to be missed out and if you ask the drivers where the other buses have got to they just blame Covid.

"It takes 25 minutes to walk to Wednesbury from Friar Park, you can wait double that for a 40 bus."

Friar Park resident Carl Bond said: "The service is terrible, I catch the 40 everyday to and from work. I've waited over an hour more than once in the last few weeks, buses are either late or two or three buses are just cancelled."

He added: "It's a joke when you leave work at 10pm and only have to get from West Brom to Friar Park and I don't get home till 11.45pm some days."

In March last year the 40 service was relaunched and passengers were promised "buses up to every eight minutes" and told to "catch the first bus that comes along".

A spokesman said: "National Express West Midlands would like to take this opportunity to apologise to customers who have had their journeys on the 40 bus delayed.

"Unfortunately, various issues have been affecting the punctuality and reliability of many of our services recently - including continuing sickness and self-isolation due to the pandemic, as well as the UK-wide difficulties in recruiting drivers, plus there are many large-scale sets of roadworks causing congestion and delaying buses.

"These issues can affect different bus depots at different times as the Omicron virus moves around the region."

Diamond Bus promised to investigate the problems on the number 40 service.

A spokesman said: "Diamond Bus operate a joint timetable and ticketing with National Express on the 40 route.

"At this moment in time, we are in the middle of a pandemic and a lot of operators have suffered with driver sickness problems and reliability issues relating to Covid. At Diamond Bus, we have enhanced our terms and conditions and worked closely with our drivers to make sure we do not have this problem."

The spokesman added: "From our perspective, we expect minimal mileage lost for on-the-day issues and we continue to operate all our services. We have checked our historical real-time information systems and we cannot see any obvious reliability issues on the 40 route.

"If the passengers can provide specific information to our customer services department, we can identify the journey operator and investigate further."