Trent Barton (by their own claim) is one of the few remaining independent bus companies left in the UK and they’ve been around in one guise or another for the best part of a century. With a fleet of over 300 buses and employing roughly 1,000 local people, they are based in Henor, Derbyshire and run routes throughout Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire and as far to the north as Manchester. This leads them to the belief that they can offer a better and more personal service than their rivals. But does it work like that in practice?
~ Routes/Timetables ~
As a generalisation, Trents’ buses cover the vast majority of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire but they do partake in small forays into north Leicestershire and south Yorkshire; one bus also runs to Manchester via Stockport. The bulk of their routes link estates to each other and smaller communities to each other and to the larger towns/cities but they do partake in a small amount of cross-country provision.
How often buses travel along their given routes depends on where you live, the time of day, the day of the week and more importantly, what competition there is. In high density commuter areas, a
Trent bus is likely to appear before your very eyes every 5 minutes or so. If you live in a smaller town with no other bus operator in competition, your service will probably be around a bus every half an hour. In a smaller town WITH another bus operator running a similar route the frequency of buses will be stepped up. The
Nottingham to Manchester ‘Trans Peak’ service is timetabled to run at 2-hourly intervals.
During peak hours some routes have a more frequent service, however this isn’t necessarily the case as quite a few routes have a high density of buses running along them all day. Off peak services vary tremendously. Evening services on some routes are infrequent at best and non-existent on others apart from Friday and Saturday nights when they can cash in on the pubbers’ and clubbers’…
~ Fares ~
Trent has a mind-boggling range of fares available and you really have to be clued-in to know which will offer you the best value. There is also no real consistency in cost/distance so it’s hard to get on a different route for the first time and have a clue as to the price.
Single fares offer the poorest value for money, but are not charged at a uniform rate regarding distance unless you travel within Nottingham’s City boundary, where there is a flat rate £1
fare. A single fare to Hucknall from Nottingham, a distance of around 8 miles – costs £1.25 currently. A trip to Bingham from Nottingham, a trip of comparable duration/distance costs less than a Pound. The explanation I have been given is that certain routes suffer more congestion, which in turn makes buses more expensive to run. Fair enough but all it does is lead to confusion for the passenger.
A TWO-TRIP ticket is one of two names given to a return fare. These are the only return tickets sold during peak travel hours, or you’ll need one for when you plan to make the reverse journey at peak time regardless of when you started out.
SUPERSAVERS on the other hand are the off-peak return option and are of course cheaper than the two-trip alternative. Again confusion abounds as to the pricing structure in the same manner as single fares. Both tickets are open-ended; in other words you don’t have to make the second half of your trip on the same day and you can make the second journey in the same direction as the first.
If you’re not already confused enough there are several other ticket options available. A FRIO ticket gives you 13 single trips between two fixed points of your choice for the price of 10. Paid for in advance on the bus you can use them all yourself or have the driver ‘clip’ the ticket for however many of you there are travelling at any one time. A CASH SAVER ticket represents the best value for money for those travelling on a daily basis. Costing £28 for travel within the Nottingham City boundary and £47 for limited areas beyond (to a distance of roughly 8/10 miles); these can be purchased from the Trent office in the Broadmarsh Bus Station (Nottingham). They come in their own little plastic wallet, bear the holders name and
photograph and last for 28 days at a time.
ZIGZAG tickets again come in two choices, or should I say prices! This is a ‘one day use go anywhere’ option, but you need to know where you’ll be heading before purchasing as it does make a difference. The £3.50 zigzag is valid on all Trent buses but NOT north of Bakewell. The £5.95 alternative is the one that is TRULY valid on all Trent buses. There is also a family zigzag ticket; the price is currently £7.50.
Concessions are available for all tickets except the Cash Saver and represent exact half-fares in just about all cases. If all that has given you a headache – try living with it! One positive thing though is that you do NOT need the correct change when you get on the bus - all drivers carry change. A far superior system in my experience. ~ BUSES/DRIVERS ~
Trent must boast one of the youngest bus fleets in the country. Most buses are no more than four years old and have low-floors (and can ‘kneel’), buggy/wheelchair zones, air conditioning/heaters, are ‘smoke-free’ and double-glazed. Most now boast a new bright red livery although the Rainbow services come in all colours of… yep you guessed it!
These aforementioned vehicles are usually clean, or at least they are on the outside. Trent say on their website that they pride themselves as being one of the few companies that clean inside the buses in full public view; in other words during the day. Now I have seen a few routes get this prestige service, but from personal experience the majority do not. The floors/seats of the buses on the three routes I regularly use are usually paper and wrapper strewn before midday. Explosions in a food factory would sometimes be appropriate words to use! Whilst I am not blaming the
bus company for the habits of some passengers, I do feel that promises made should maybe be kept.
As the majority of the fleet is pretty new they do have a fairly high ‘comfort’ factor for passengers.
The buses are on the whole nice and warm in the winter and cool in the summer – but a combination of powerful air-conditioning and open windows in the summer can tend to leave passengers at the back looking a little wind-swept!
On the whole the majority of buses do appear to run pretty much to schedule and for the most part, where delays occur it isn’t Trent’s fault. Increasing congestion means buses get held up in areas where there are no bus lanes for example, inconsiderate
car-parking which blocks bus routes is another eternal headache. In any case, when you become familiar with your regular route, you learn it’s little time keeping quirks.
Reliability, or as I have come to call it in recent months “Will I have to get off and push?” is, as you can maybe tell, an area they definitely could improve on. In just the last month I have personally been on/seen FOUR buses that have broken down and this is just on ONE route. One driver told me that the company KNEW the bus was ‘faulty’ but refused to do anything about it until the inevitable occurred. The words ‘just not good enough’ are the politest I can think of…
The drivers are this bus company’s redeeming quality. Overall they are fantastic - friendly, helpful, chatty, polite and considerate to all of their passengers. They tend to stick to just one or two routes, which allows them to get to know their regular customers and vice versa. This makes for a far more
pleasant start and end to your journey. They are not only each passenger’s every day contact with the bus company but generally speaking the best people to ask with any minor query. Of course there are exceptions to every rule – but you quickly learn which drivers are the best.
~ Customer Services ~
So what happens if you have a question your driver can’t answer? What if you need route/timetable/fare information? The best place to go to is Trent’s office in the Broadmarsh. The staff there are friendly and polite and answer all questions efficiently and most importantly – with a smile. But what if you can’t get to a
Travel office? The short answer to that one would be ‘wait until you can’! You could try e mailing them via the website but answers are not swiftly given and therefore in my experience this isn’t recommended.
However this is still preferable to the nightmare that lurks at the other end of the dreaded Customer Service Helpline. I call it something else entirely… When I have managed to get past the automated scenario and spoken to a ‘real’ person I have found that they are not only extremely unhelpful, but also rude, patronising and seem more concerned with how stressful their own day is than helping their customers. When you have had this experience, don’t bother complaining. They go deaf. Very deaf.
~ In Summary ~
They do have some good ideas. They have excellent money saving tickets for example, but they can get lost in the quagmire of ‘just too many’ options and a muddled and very confusing fare structure. They train the drivers well but at times fail completely to tell them what is going on with route/timetable changes, thus rendering this counter-productive.
They have clearly invested heavily in new vehicles and then, apparently, fail to maintain them properly. A shiny new bus is neither use nor ornament when it’s stuck at the side of the road, going nowhere and full of disgruntled passengers.
In areas they cover where there is competition from a rival bus company it is likely you won't hear a single word of complaint regarding Trent or it’s services. Buses here are spotless and frequent. If you are however unfortunate enough to live in an area where you ONLY have Trent providing you with a bus service (as I do), then it is highly likely that your bus service will be at the ‘lower’ end of the acceptability scale.
Now is probably an appropriate juncture to announce that Trent buses have just been crowned ‘Bus Operator of the Year’ for the third time in five years. Yes, really! An industry given award it is public transports equivalent of the Oscars; i.e. not passenger generated. If it was… well they wouldn’t get a pat on the back from me!
Trent has, in the past, worked very hard in my area at driving out the competition. The knock-on effect to this of course is we are now left with a second rate service that we have no choice but to accept. This is hardly what you would expect from an award winning company. We’ve just suffered a scathing round of bus-cuts, which has left in its wake a confusing new timetable and us with no evening services from Sunday to Thursday. I have been left with the belief that Trent cares about nothing except for profit; routes full of commuters during peak hours have been labelled ‘unviable’. We are not the only ones. I glance regularly at their website and see many other routes are/have been suffering the same fate.
I used to be a huge fan of Trent buses. I have even worked for them. It’s unfortunate then that nowadays there are more things wrong with the way things are set up than right. All the hard work being put in by the drivers, all the money being spent on new vehicles is being completely wasted by poor decision making and, from how I see things, money coming above anything and everyone.
If you need to get from A to B during Peak hours or are fortunate enough to live on a main commuter route then you really couldn’t do any better than have Trent as your bus company. If those two statements don’t apply to you – you have my deepest sympathies.
~ Contact information ~
Trent Barton,
Mansfield Road,
Heanor,
Derbyshire DE75 7BG
Telephone 01773 712265 Mon - Sat
E mail enquiries@trentbarton.co.uk
Website - www.trentbuses.co.uk
* Please note that below – for staff courtesy/helpfulness – I counted the drivers!
The Wooden Spoon Award 2003 Goes To... 
Great Review, such a shame there isn;t mroe competition in Nottingham to keep fares down and quality up!