Warwickshire bus route X20
Johnsons service X20 is a bus route in the West Midlands, United Kingdom.
History
Service X20 is the successor to Midland Red's Service 150 between Birmingham and Stratford-upon-Avon (a route that was also operated by Stratford Blue until the company was acquired by Midland Red in the early 1970s). Service 150 worked to an augmented 15-minute daytime frequency with Services 154 and 181 between Birmingham and Shirley until the latter services passed to West Midlands PTE in 1973. Thereafter, Service 150 was renumbered Service X50 with journeys extended to serve Chipping Norton and Oxford.
A curiosity of Midland Red's Service 150 was that drivers working the last bus back to Birmingham at 2240 were under instructions to wait up to twenty minutes before departing Stratford in order to allow theatre-goers to watch the curtain come down on Royal Shakespeare Company productions (Source: Midland Red Birmingham & District timetable, August 28th 1971).
Service X20 has had a variety of operators serving it over the past few years. National Express West Midlands (formerly Travel West Midlands) operated the service from Birmingham Central garage on Sundays under contract to Warwickshire County Council using Optare Spectras. After this, service was then operated by Petes Travel who briefly extended the route to Oxford as service X20.
In 2004, service X20 saw Warwickshire County Council buy new buses for the service. As a result, Stratford Blue picked up the contract until they were taken over by Stagecoach in Warwickshire who in turn lost the contract to Johnsons
Present
Service X20 currently serves Birmingham, Hall Green, Shirley, Hockley Heath and Stratford upon Avon. Johnsons currently run the service on an hourly basis Monday - Saturday daytime and every 1 hour 30 minutes on a Sunday with no evening service from Birmingham to Stratford upon Avon. The service is usually run by three Alexander Dennis Enviro300s (three of which are branded for the X20 under Warwickshire County Council colours) and one Optare Tempo, however, when needed the service will usually experience Dennis Darts.
Service X20 is run under contract to Warwickshire County Council. From the 22nd February 2008 Johnsons started operating this service taking over from Stagecoach , due to retendering of the Warwickshire County Council contract. The council owned Enviro's will transfer from Stagecoach to Johnsons from this date.