A topic which often causes wide debate is the competition for routes and passengers. Nottingham hasn't been shy to a bit of competition with the memorable 'bus war' between Nottingham City Transport and Nottingham Omnibuses back in 1994 when Nottingham Omnibuses ceased trading.
Tactics of this 'bus war' included aggressive driving, blocking bus stops, boxing buses in and obstructing passengers from getting on to the bus in an attempt to become Nottingham's biggest bus company. Unfortunately for Nottingham Omnibuses their attempts we short lived as they ceased trading in 1994 leaving NCT to rule the City along with Trent Barton.
Trent Barton have also seen their fair share of 'bus wars' as bus companies try to barge their way in onto their 'patch' so to speak and try to get passengers off Trent Barton and onto their service.
Premiere Travel a family-run originally started up as a coach company but started operating commercial bus services mainly competing with Trent Barton's highly successful routes such as Bingham Xprss and Radliffe Line (now Rushcliffe Greens) by providing direct links with their X1 which was later renumbered to Red1 and proved very popular before Premiere made a carbon copy of Trent Barton's Cotgrave Connection named Red2 which was later withdrawn owing poor passenger use and the introduction of 'Bargain Bus 2' offering fares as low as 50p and £1 to Cotgrave.
Around the same time Premiere Travel offered a service between Nottingham and Loughborough via Costock and Bunny giving direct links which Arriva said 'wasn't financially viable' when they ran the route although Premiere showed that this was a very successful route and later forced Kinchbus (Part of Wellglade Group of which Trent Barton are a part of) to withdraw their service 9 operating the same route.
In 2010 Premiere Travel bought the rights of Veolia Nottingham getting thirty - forty vehicles and a few tendered services for Nottingham University. There expansions kept coming as they successfully competed along some Trent Barton corridors such as Red5 and Red8 as Red1 and Red9 already mentioned above - Premiere Travel looked like a big contender.
However, with expenses of around £1,000 a week their RedFLYER competing with Trent Barton's Skylink seemed to be the biggest costing route and after less than a year was forced with withdraw even with them 'ditching' the rather expensive to maintain coaches months in at an attempt to save money. Perhaps this could possibly be to blame for their ceasing of trading in January of 2013.
Just like the 1993/4 bus war the temperature started to heat up between the two companies as Nottingham embarked on another 'bus war' which just like we saw in 1993/4 was bus blocking stops, exchange of words between drivers, blocking bus from stands etc.
Premiere Travel tried a initiative called 'Fair Fares' which was Premiere Travel offering low fares to services competing directy with Trent Barton this saw fares at £1.00 which sometimes three times lower than the offerings of Trent Barton's fares. Unfortunately, due to increasing costs and unable to supply enough funds in 2013 Premiere Travel was placed in administration and ceased trading weeks later with no buyer coming forward.
With Trent Barton shaking off one competitor and returning to some normality and space to breath later saw Yourbus begin to contend with 'big' services of Nottingham City Transport and Trent Barton.
For quite some time Yourbus have competed with Nottingham City Transport's 36 service to Chilwell although this wasn't as heated as other bus wars between companies. Now in 2015 both the Y36 and 36 are running with very good passenger numbers with Nottingham City Transport investing in brand new Enviro400s and Yourbus buying the brand new Mercedes Citaro it looks like neither will be going anywhere soon. It will interesting to see how both services are when the tram hits the streets!
Yourbus known to some enthusiasts as 'posh premiere' which has reference to the fact that they're taking same approach as what premiere did but the difference is that yourbus (with the exception of their Enviros from premiere and dual door Mercedes from London) use a fleet that is made up of Citaros and Streetlites bought from brand new whereas premiere's fleet was made up of older second hand vehicles which reflected the fairs as more of a cheap and cheerful service.
Yourbus try various different ways to better there services and the Y1 and Y28 are two services that are consistently seeing route and timetable changes in a bid to get more customers on their services.
I noticed something on Facebook recently about the way in which yourbus are marketing their services and it being linked closely to Trent Barton's and for me I have to agree. Infact if faced with the 'Google' or 'Bing' test but with 'Trent Barton' or 'Yourbus' I wouldn't really be sure which one's which.
Is this really the way competition has become, marketing routes the same as the competitor so passengers may get confused and use your service instead? Why can't Yourbus come up with their own marketing to make them look 'different' and perhaps stand out of the crowd rather than following the trends of the likes of Trent Barton?
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