Nottingham Express Transit (NET)

...long and takes you between Nottingham and Hucknall.

Starting at Station Street it heads through the Lace Market and the Old Market Square to Hyson Green, Radford, Basford, Bulwell and onwards to Hucknall train station. The alternative spur travels from Station Street to the Phoenix Park and Ride site, which is near junction 26 of the M1. The route from Station Street to Hyson Green is through the city streets; from Basford onwards ...
...£1 for say Bulwell to Nottingham and £1.20 for the full journey. Child single trip fares seem to be charged at a flat rate of 60 pence. There are no return tickets; instead you buy a ‘Day Tramrider’ ticket costing £2 for adults and £1.20 per child. There is also a ‘Family Tramrider’ for up to two adults and three children costing £4. Weekly passes cost £9 for adults, £5 for children, unlimited journeys. I must also point out that child fares are ... more

Tuesday the ninth of March marked a historic day in the city of Nottingham; the first NET tram left Hucknall, the first tram to be seen on the city’s streets in almost seventy years. This also marked the end of almost four years of construction work, which began in June 2000 and was overseen by the Arrow Consortium comprising – Carillion (civil engineers), Bombardier (tram builders), Transdev (transport integration specialists) and NCT (Nottingham City Transport). The cost? A whopping £200 million taken from Government initiative funding.

~Route/timetabling~

There is only the one route open currently, more to the point there is only one line constructed. Lines Two and Three are still in the planning/consultation phases and with current Government thinking on issues of value for money regarding all Tram Systems Nation-wide, Line One could very well end up as being pretty unique! It is 14 kilometres long and takes you between Nottingham and Hucknall.

Starting at Station Street it heads through the Lace Market and the Old Market Square to Hyson Green, Radford, Basford, Bulwell and onwards to Hucknall train station. The alternative spur travels from Station Street to the Phoenix Park and Ride site, which is near junction 26 of the M1. The route from Station Street to Hyson Green is through the city streets; from Basford onwards it follows the Robin Hood train line rail for rail.

Apart from the Park and Ride at Phoenix Park I have already mentioned there are four other similar sites, at Hucknall train and tram station, Moor Bridge, Bulwell train and tram station and Wilkinson Street. CCTV covers all of these, they are also supposed to be patrolled regularly by NET staff; I have never actually witnessed this.

The available timetables, whether on paper or viewed online are fairly cumbersome creatures that I shall translate into something brief and comprehensible! From what I can gather and from experience, Mondays to Saturdays there is a tram every fifteen minutes from Hucknall southbound to Station Street beginning at around 6am and finishing around midnight. Northbound there is a tram leaving Station Street every seven to eight minutes, half to Phoenix Park and half to Hucknall, so again roughly a quarter hour service to either destination and again within the same hours approximately of operation. On Sundays the service is half hourly to either destination. There! Clear as mud…

~Fares and concessions~

There are way too many different fare combinations/concessions/combination tickets available to go into here. Well I could but I’d confuse myself way before I’d addled anyone else’s brain so I’ll keep to bare basics if that’s possible!

Adult single fares are essentially 80 pence for a couple of stops, £1 for say Bulwell to Nottingham and £1.20 for the full journey. Child single trip fares seem to be charged at a flat rate of 60 pence. There are no return tickets; instead you buy a ‘Day Tramrider’ ticket costing £2 for adults and £1.20 per child. There is also a ‘Family Tramrider’ for up to two adults and three children costing £4. Weekly passes cost £9 for adults, £5 for children, unlimited journeys. I must also point out that child fares are only valid until 9.45pm.

Sounds simple? Well there’s also a range of combination tickets available the include bus and tram travel from both NCT (Nottingham City Transport) and TrentBarton buses. NCT’s combination Dayrider ticket is priced at £2.20, and Trent’s combination tickets are only available on a couple of buses and from very specific bus/tram stops. Then there’s the issue of concession Cards. Nottingham City Council cardholders travel free, Nottinghamshire cardholders travel for half price. There are also Kangaroo tickets… Brain exploded yet? If it hasn’t, please pay the conductor when you board if you please (well if you can find him or her…)!

~Trams, tram stops and facilities~

All 23 tram stops have glass and metal bus shelter style seating areas, full CCTV coverage, help points, litter bins and electronic hanging boards detailing when the next tram will be arriving and to where it goes. They are of course all at the correct level so when the tram doors open they match up – for perfect disabled/pushchair access.

I have noticed several anomalies though that I feel are well worth a mention. The Station Street terminus has clearly been chosen because of its proximity to the Train station and there is very good access from there, but from Station Street itself it’s another matter. My advice is to either take the lift or a good course in aerobic exercise before tackling the stairs! Let’s hope the lift never give up the ghost. It also has NO seats on the platform area or an electronic sign either. There is a sign but it’s at the top of the stairs, there are also a couple of benches there too. Now maybe it’s just me?

The Station Street stop is not the only one that seems to have been poorly planned. Yes there are these fancy signs at all stops but in most cases they only face in ONE direction. Fine if you are approaching the stop from the apparent ‘NET’ correct way, completely useless from the other. Bulwell stop baffles me, you can only approach from one direction and yet the sign is still facing the wrong way! Am I being too picky? Not if it’s raining and you need to know whether it’s worth hanging around for 15 minutes for a tram I’m not.

Now onto the trams! Sleek, shiny, new, quiet, comfortable, fast, and efficient – but enough of the corporate spiel and let’s get down to brass tacks. Granted all fifteen of them look good whizzing about the streets in the city centre so the sleek, shiny and new are certainly correct, but are those good looks deceptive? In my humble opinion yes they are and I shall detail why. Apart from the fact that the electronic destination ‘boards’ on the front/back/sides of the vehicles are too small and displayed in a very odd coloured green/yellow font which is very hard to read and the fact that the interiors have a very odd and unpleasant ‘smell’ about them (cleaning products? Newness? Who knows but it gives me headaches) these little beauties have been designed with one solitary and singular thought in mind – maximum revenue. Cram as many bodies onto each tram as you can and watch the money roll in.

There are not enough seats, period. I find it ridiculous that you HAVE to go to either terminus to even have a hope of gaining a seat and even then there is every chance if you’re not quick off the mark that you’ll be standing for the duration of the journey. Now in theory wheelchair users should get priority for access but I have seen them left behind and that sickened me. It smacked way too much of profit over fairness. Far be it from me to say so, but as you can fit several people in one wheelchair space…

Access for all is NET’s pride statement, its policy, and the phrase it likes to shout from the rafters. Now apart from the wheelchair issue I have already covered let me detail a few more examples of the sentence that should read ‘access for all except…’ No pets except in carriers for trips to the veterinarians. No work clothes. No eating or drinking. Best fold that pushchair down. Access for all? Don’t make me laugh!

I’m still trying to work out, in all fairness if you are better off sitting down for the journey or ‘strap hanging’. I’ve tried both – yes on one solitary occasion I was lucky enough to get a seat and then ended up looking at somebody’s crotch for half an hour. Guess it could have been worse! There’s a little space at the front, left or right that is perfect to jam yourself into. I recommend that approach if you are still interested in travel with NET!

There was also a lot of confusion in the beginning and to be fair there still is about if all stops really are ‘by request only’ or if all trams will stop at all, well stops! All trams have bells as on buses, the notices at the stops say all stops are by request but no one seemed clear on the subject including the conductors. Matters are not helped when you ask if you have to hit the bell or not and the answer is ‘who knows?’ Seriously, I have had a conversation with a member of staff from NET who said even they didn’t know whether a particular service would be ‘request or all stops’ until they got on board. Talk about one hand not knowing what the other is doing!

~Staff~

Again, maybe I’ve just been unlucky but they do seem to be a bit of a mixed bunch considering they are all fresh out of training school and should still have the ‘how to deal with the public’ training meetings firmly lodged in their collective brains. Some are friendly, they smile and they are helpful. Some on the other hand are surly almost to the point of rudeness and you do wonder why they have chosen employment that involves interaction.

One thing is consistent however. Apart from the driver you’d at times be forgiven for thinking there isn’t another member of staff on board; I’m talking about those elusive conductors I briefly touched on earlier. Now if you are travelling the complete journey then they will catch up with you I'm afraid, even at the busiest of periods. If you’re just hopping on and off, say a couple of stops at a time you probably won’t see them, but I didn’t say that! Again, when they do come round, some ask for proof you’ve paid, others just give a cursory glance, ask if everyone has tickets and clear off again. Relying on the publics’ honesty is possibly NOT the best way to ensure you take maximum revenue…

~Safety/reliability~

Where do I start? NET has been plagued with problems since test running began last year during which time two trams derailed. Since opening there have been numerous power failures which have ground the system to a total standstill, they have hit and been hit by road vehicles and two weeks ago two trams came within 60 metres of ploughing into each other. I fully realise that every new transportation system has teething troubles but NET certainly appears jinxed…

In my opinion rushing the project through to completion has caused most of these problems. Now you may think four years is no rush, but on numerous occasions the construction work fell behind the timescale anticipated; maybe the timescale was inaccurate? The opening date was moved back several times and then somewhat inexplicably was moved forwards from April ’04 to the beginning of March. In all honesty, I do not believe they were ready.

~Customer services~

Finally I can give them some praise! Come on, it had to have one redeeming feature and it’s very possibly a good thing too given my experiences travelling with them! Now I’ve only made four journeys and already I’ve had cause to complain. Granted three were trouble free apart from the overcrowding and other niggles I’ve mentioned but the last time I travelled with them was horrendous in every sense of the word. We were joined by a very drunken young lady (she shouldn’t have even been onboard – Bylaws and all that) who was not just ‘out of it’ but jammed next to me and was sick to boot.

Yes I emailed Customer Services and prayed for some kind of shining light at the end of a fairly dark tunnel. They not only telephoned me the next day but couldn’t be more apologetic – I think the gist of the conversation was that if they find out the conductor KNEW she was onboard they’ll be a job vacancy opening up… I also received less than twenty-four hours later two complimentary vouchers to be exchanged for two free Dayrider tickets. Interestingly the vouchers are numbered, as in how many have been given out. Mine have numbers in the 4000 range. Now that’s a high level of complaints in anyone’s books. Maybe it isn’t just me after all!

~Summary~

So there we have it. It’s not working. Well it is but not in any great sense of the word. It will get you from A to B, well probably. If travelling in some modicum of comfort is your scene, forget it. If even getting a seat is a priority, forget it. If you want a guaranteed service, forget it. Granted the addition of the trams in Nottingham has made the City Council sit up and clean certain areas of this fair city up but even that is a little false when it is only areas that have trams passing through that got the sprucing up treatment.

I could never understand why Hucknall, which already had excellent bus services from the town centre as well as half-hourly trains needed yet another form of public-transport and I live here! I still cannot understand it. It hasn’t magically solved the traffic problems; NET have boasted about the number of car journeys they will save each year, but I still see the same old bottle-necks and to be frank some of them are far worse now the trams are running.

Has it tempted me away from the buses? Has it heck as like! Firstly from where I live I need to catch a bus to get to the tram which is a tad pointless. Even if I lived in the Town Centre, given my experiences I wouldn’t change over even if I were paid to do so (if I haven’t made that quite clear enough)! Secondly, I like to sit down whilst travelling into Nottingham. I like to read when travelling. I like clean and breathable air. I enjoy the rapport I have with the bus drivers. The trams may be sleek and stylish on the face of things but when that is about all they do have going for them it is no contest… All hail the Tram? I’m not bowing…

There’s just one thing left to say. Anyone want a free Dayrider ticket or two?!

 

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