Ring and Ride booking to be made easier for thousands of users

More than 70,000 Ring and Ride users across the West Midlands will find it easier to book their journeys when new phone times are introduced this weekend.

Users of the Ring and Ride service will be able to book their journeys closer to the time they want to travel as phone lines will be available throughout the day rather than at restricted times.

The service provides a lifeline for tens of thousands of people with limited mobility, many of whom would be unable to leave their homes to go shopping or visit day centres, family and friends without it.

But some users have told how they can, at times, experience difficulty in getting through to make a phone booking.

Now West Midlands Special Needs Transport (wmsnt), which runs Ring and Ride, is to enhance its booking times from this Sunday (October 9).

It means people wanting to book a journey which goes over the boundary into a neighbouring borough will be able to book two days in advance rather than the three day minimum previously in place.

And all users booking a journey two days in advance will be able to phone the service between 10:30am and 4:15pm Monday to Sunday instead of only during limited time slots allocated to them. In the past those booking cross-boundary journeys could only phone between 6pm and 10pm.

Peter Maggs, Chief Executive of wmsnt, said: “One comment that has been made over the years is that it is sometimes difficult to get through on the phone as users trying to call two days in advance have only limited time slots in which to book."

“Operating the booking line between 10:30am and 4:15pm should make the system much easier and efficient to use and give our users more flexibility."

Despite the changes to booking times, passengers can continue using their existing Ring and Ride booking phone numbers.

There is also no change for those users who normally ring between 9am and 10:15am to confirm a pre-booked journey two days in advance. Time slots for users wanting to book one day in advance remain unaltered.

Ring and Ride, which began in 1983 with two minibuses operating out of a Victorian building in Park Lane, Hockley, provides around 1.8 million trips a year in the West Midlands making it the largest privately operated Ring and Ride service in the world.

For any further information on the Ring and Ride service, service users are asked to phone their normal enquiry line number.