As students, it carried them around the country; now National Express is hoping to woo back a generation of high-flyers who drive into the capital, with a luxury commuter coach that will whisk them from the shires to their place of work.

After successful trials of a commuter coach from Milton Keynes to Canary Wharf, in April National Express will launch a service from Swindon and Reading to London. Further routes into the capital are planned, as well as dedicated services in known traffic hotspots, including Manchester to Liverpool and Leeds to Harrogate.

The coach service will offer reclining leather seats, wi-fi access, newspapers and a bottle of water, as well as a text message to alert customers that the coach is on its way. Significantly, it promises a fare 60-70 per cent cheaper than a monthly rail ticket and a journey time of two hours.

The main rationale behind the commuter coach is to lure car drivers away from their vehicles, rather than to compete head-to-head with rival train services.

The transport company, which runs bus, coach and rail services, hopes that its venture will help to convince the Highways Agency to open more bus priority lanes on the country's motorway network, such as that on the M4, by demonstrating that a new generation of coach travel can lure motorists from cars.

National Express has been arguing that it should be allowed to use high occupancy vehicle lanes proposed for parts of the M1 and M3. These are planned only for cars with more than one passenger.

Paul Bunting, strategic planning and marketing director at National Express, said: “We are continuing to lobby the government agencies to give coaches access to priority lanes and high occupancy vehicle lanes to make our journey times more and more appealing.

“We are committed to changing people's perceptions of coach travel through a variety of ways, including new product development, as well as informing people that coach is the most environmentally friendly form of public transport, as well as the best value.”

Figures produced by National Express and the Edinburgh Centre of Carbon Management show that coaches produce 29g of CO2 for every passenger kilometre travelled, compared with 52g for trains and 171g for cars.

Initially, National Express will run one service a day from Swindon and Reading to London, which will stop at Hammersmith, Trafalgar Square and Victoria Street before ending at Victoria coach station.

National Express, which announces full-year results on Thursday, accelerated its interest in commuter coaches at the end of last year when it acquired Kings Ferry Travel group, an independent coach operator that already provides travel services from Kent and Essex into the City of London and Canary Wharf.

Anthony Bynum, 48, from Milton Keynes, has been travelling into the City of London on National Express's trial service since last summer. He pays £163 a month to travel by coach, compared with £342 a month to

travel by rail and tube to the investment company where he works, near Monument: “I leave the house at 5.45am and the bus is always at the Tesco car park at 5.55am. The bus gets to Bank at 7.45am, which means that I am in the office at the same time as the boss. When I take the train, I really struggle to get in on time.

“The coach is always on time and it's a comfortable ride. Once you're on you can do some work or have a sleep - most people sleep.”

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