The two aspects where our operators have excelled are absolute professionalism by the operators and their staff, and a commitment to communicate any disruption where it happens.

Well done Trent Barton, NCT, Premier and Yourbus, and credit to their first class drivers.

The previous service (run under the Guide Friday brand) was withdrawn in 2004, as it was making insufficient revenue and the need to replace the ageing Leyland Atlantean double deckers.

More information can be found on the Lincolnite website.

Deregistrations:

• 78/79
• Skylink
• 70/71/72

Registrations:

• 70/71 – Nottingham -> Bulwell via Sherwood Rise and Basford
• 76/78 – Nottingham -> Strelley via Alfreton Rd
• 79 – Nottingham -> Arnold via Alfreton Road, Nutall Road, Bells Lane Estate, Bulwell, Rise Park and Bestwood Park

Variation (Timetable):

• 40/41, 56/59, 58, Citytlink 1, 68/69,Worklink 3&4,39,6/6A,35,37, 8,9

Variation (Timetable & Route)

• 10. 11, 13, 5, 7,15, 16

A lot there! The main interest as usual is the de- and re-registrations. This seems to be a recast of the more minor “yellow” routes. The main corridors seem the same, and frequencies are seemingly similar. When combined with 68/69 changes, is this a move on the tram? Too early to say until the timetables are available. Skylink comes as no surprise, and the others could be quite minor.

KINCHBUS LTD, MANSFIELD ROAD HEANOR DE75 7BG, GB
Operating between Nottingham, Broadmarsh Bus Station and Loughborough,
Baxter Gate given service number 9 effective from 25-Mar-2012.

For anyone not familiar with this service, it is effectively Wellglade’s on road competitor for Premier’s Red 9 (aka X9) which was itself introduced to replace Arriva’s discontinued 99 service. Premier grew this service quite vigorously in its early days, to provide a much more complete service than Arriva had provided in recent years.

The service is a simple stopping service between Nottingham and Loughborough via Ruddington, Bunny, Costock. and Rempston. It is the quickest bus service end-to-end, but relatively slow compared to the rail service.

It is unknown whether Wellglade intended to attempt to make the “9″ into a shared service. When all said and done, they have succesfully shared such services as the X38 (Derby – Burton) with Arriva and Pronto (Nottingham – North Notts) with Stagecoach. Not to mention Felix services.

Anyway, it is no more. With the additional recent de-registration of Midland General 2, and the Midland General 4 , and Premier Red 4 now just a memory, it begs a significant question: Is the Wellglade / Premier “bus war” coming to an end?

The situation as announced is:

• An hourly service, via Clifton
• Similar journey time as the NCC service, but not via the A453.
• Operated by coach – not double decker (presumably because of the railway bridge at Kingston-on-Soar).
• Seat bookings available for passengers using the full route, but will be stopping at intermediate stops.
• No detailed times, fares of even a VOSA registration yet.

Premier now have quite a simple zoned fare structure, which shows EMA (which they don’t currently serve) as two zones from Nottingham – This is £2 single £3.50 two-trip based on their standard fares. Whether there is an introductory discount stands to be seen.

One likely route is to take the existing NCT No. 1 route from Nottingham to Gotham, then adopt what NCT call the Skylink “full diversion” via Kingston, Packington Hill (Kegworth) – but may include Kegworth Centre, and Pegasus Business Park. I can’t see an easy way of including East Midlands Parkway without adding a significant time penalty.

Premier’s record of resurrecting abandoned services is good. Red 9 shows what can be achieved with determination, and Red 5 made a success, where Long Eaton Express struggled.

I for one wish them well with the venture, and look forward to the half-hourly upgrade!

The existing service has existed for eight years and has been a reasonable success. From a relatively quiet start, the service which then left the City via Queens Drive, Meadows, and ran direct to the airport, grew slowly. A later modification to the route saw it observe every stop via the Meadows, Trent Bridge, Wilford and Clifton. The service grew year on year and probably met its best loadings just before the recession, and a reduction in flights following the EasyJet withdrawal from EMA. Trent Barton’s Rainbow 5 / Indigo service long pre-dated Skylink

At is peak the service carried 0.5m passengers per annum.

So why sponsored? There seems two reasons. Nottingham City Council wanted a premium service, and the airport were willing to pay, and it fitted in with their environmental marketing. The subsidies provided two things:

• Effectively a spare bus; The lay-over both at the airport, and in the city meant that there was pretty much as much standing time as journey time. This resulted in a very punctual, but costly service.

• Many services, especially overnight and at shoulder times had very poor loadings.

Overall, however much of the service must have been quite close to breakeven.

Trent Barton have been expanding their Indigo service over the last few months, and I suspect have been looking at a way of expanding their semi-fast service to Long Eaton, in response to Premier’s Red 5. The expansion makes a lot of sense for TB. Best of all, it doesn’t erode the Indigo brand. It could also finally replace the Long Eaton Express, which has probably exceeded its life.

There are however, some significant limitations, as far as I can see, in comparison to the NCT service.

• The journey time is 55 minutes, approximately 30% longer than the existing service, and prone to traffic delays on University Boulevard, and through Long Eaton.
• There is a loss of through journey opportunities from Meadows, Trent Bridge, West Bridgford, Wilford and Clifton. This may lead to modal shift. It is not obvious what proportion of users are really affected by this, but it will be some. There is no benefit along the new route, other than a more frequent service, and Beeston Bus station loses its link.

So, Is there life in the old route yet?

The existing route was very well resourced, and 24 hour. These requirements were determined on the basis of the tendered service. Is it possible that the service could be viable based on a more lightly resourced operation? If so, watch out for a registration of Nottingham – Wilford – EMA daytime / Evening service.

Nottingham City Transport have announced on their site that they intend to de-register the existing Nottingham City Council / East Midlands Airport sponsored Skylink service. TB intend to use Skylink as the new service’s brand, and NCT state that competition regulations require them to discontinue to sponsored service .

The TB service has broadly the same departure points in Nottingham as the existing service (Broadmarsh & Friar Lane) but will no longer call at the Station Front. The service continues via Castle Boulevard / Dunkirk / Beeston (Queens Road only), Long Eaton, Sawley, Castle Donington and finally EMA. One journey an hour will continue to Loughborough. The journey time is stated as 55 minutes, and departures are in line with the existing service, although no timetable is presently available to confirm this.

Fares are interesting – The emphasis is clearly cash fares – matching the existing service. The TB cashsaver zone C will be extended to cover EMA, and no information is given as to interoperability with other operator’s fares, other than the Citycard / Easyrider addon fare is discontinued. No details on the Kangaroo addon, but based on the wording of the posting, I guess it is discontinued.

These are the facts. This is however a significant change to one of the City’s flagship services, and I intend to offer some comment and analysis in a follow up post

Also from the same date, there is a variation to Y36. Is this variation the NY36 perhaps?NCT already run their N36 via the University campus, so are Yourbus trying to further cash in on the student trade by ending the current NY36 trips via Lenton Abbey and diverting them through the campus? Obviously without timetables, it’s difficult to speculate.

Top National Bus Driver
Runner Up: Ian Grebby – TrentBarton.
Highly Commended: Kevin Wood – TrentBarton.

Top City Operator
Runner up: Nottingham City Transport.

Top Shire Operator
Highly commended: Stagecoach East Midlands.

Top National Bus Depot
Winner: Nottingham City Transport, Gotham Garage (for those of you not local, pronounced GoTam).

Accessibility: The Claudia Flanders Memorial Award                                         Winner: Nottingham City Council – Linking The Journey.

Marketing Excellence Award
Winner: Trent Barton – Red Arrow – Red Instead.
Runner Up: Stagecoach UK Bus – Stagecoach Gold.

Putting Passengers First
Winner: Trent Barton – Putting Passengers First: A Customer Obsessed Culture.

Environment
Winner: Stagecoach Group – Uk Bus Sustainability Strategy

Well done to those concerned!

Wellglade have assured that there will be no job losses for the 10 Felix staff who work on the two bus services.

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