451 Bus Service: Sutton Coldfield – West Bromwich

There can’t be too many bus services in and around Birmingham that have needed their own police escort on a Saturday night? The 451 which runs between Sutton Coldfield and West Bromwich through Kingstanding and Pheasey has that dubious honour.
Admittedly that was a long time ago, but it wasn’t that long ago that I witnessed crackheads trying to sell dodgy perfume to strangers on there, or read of onboard assaults and muggings. Since then, the 451 has been ‘relaunched’. If you see one going past, you’ll notice that the back of some buses are decorated with a picture of an ecstatic young woman extolling the virtues of the all-​new ‘safer’ 451.
So how have they made it safer? Ironically, after years of cramming people onto a single-​decker, it’s now almost always a double-​decker and seems to be a lot quieter because of it. I use the bus far more regularly than I used to and have yet to encounter the faintest whiff of trouble; although I do sometimes catch the whiff of tobacco and spliff from the backseat.