Go West Midlands was a bus company based in Birmingham in the United Kingdom. It was owned by Go-Ahead Group and was formed through Go-Ahead buying Probus Management Limited (trading as People's Express, and before that Pete's Travel) and Birmingham Coach Company (trading as Diamond Bus) and merging the two. Bus services were operated throughout the West Midlands under the Diamond name.
Go West Midlands was seen as the second biggest operator in the West Midlands with National Express West Midlands (Travel West Midlands at the time) being the biggest.
In 2006, Diamond relaunched their image, by increasing its frequency on route 16, which basically matched that of Travel West Midlands and increased its frequencies on the 17, 63, 64, 74 and 87.
However, in November 2007, Diamond withdrew its services on the 17 and 63 and majorly altered its operations on services 74 and 87 (cutting parts of the route off completely).
Diamond also lost many Centro and Staffordshire County contracts to other operators since Go-Ahead took over and stopped many of their school services.
On 3 March 2008 Go-Ahead announced that it had sold Go West Midlands to Rotala Group subsidiary Central Connect. To make significant cost savings, Rotala plans to integrate the Diamond branding into its existing business. Currently, buses are losing their "we're part of the Go-Ahead Group" branding on the Diamond livery.
Read more about Go West Midlands: Fares, Diamond Routes
Famous quotes containing the words west and/or midlands:
“East Side, West Side,
All around the town.”
—Charles B. Lawlor (1852–1925)
“Sunday night meant, in the dark, wintry, rainy Midlands ... anywhere where two creatures might stand and squeeze together and spoon.... Spooning was a fine art, whereas kissing and cuddling are calf-processes.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)