Trent Barton bus in Beeston |
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| Slogan | "The really good bus company" |
| Parent | Wellglade Group (Holding Company) |
| Founded | 1989 |
| Headquarters | Heanor, Derbyshire |
| Service area | Derbyshire, Cheshire, Greater Manchester, Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire, Staffordshire, |
| Service type | Bus |
| Hubs | Alfreton, Belper, Burton upon Trent, Buxton, Derby, Heanor, Ilkeston, Long Eaton, Mansfield, Nottingham |
| Web site | www.trentbarton.co.uk |
Trent Barton is one of the very small number of significant independent bus operators in the United Kingdom. It was formed as the result of merging Derbyshire's Trent Buses with Nottinghamshire's Barton Transport.
It employs 1,000 people in various parts of Derbyshire, Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire, running a fleet of around 330 modern buses on a network of local routes. trent barton claim every single bus in the fleet is now low floor (not including coach services on the red arrow, transpeak and commuter xprss), although occasionally a bus primarily used at sister company Notts and Derby may stray onto a Trent route, especially during university vacation periods, when large numbers of buses used on the unibus services are idle however if a bus is not low floor it runs for free. It operates services from Manchester in the north to Loughborough in the south as well as Ashbourne, Burton upon Trent, Chesterfield, Derby, Ilkeston, Mansfield, and Nottingham.
They advertise as 'The really good bus company', offering to create a top-quality service with drivers fixed to one route or brand; this has led to some drivers knowing their regular customers, even to the extent that they know when particular passengers get on and off, even on intense urban routes or night buses. Some drivers even claim to have been to their passengers' weddings.[1]
The company featured in the magazine Coach & Bus Week in a feature about young people joining bus firms.[1]
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Many of the routes are branded with their own bus livery and name, with the route brand name registered as the service number. The 'rainbow' services are a group of frequent, high density services radiating from Nottingham to its outer suburbs from every 6-12 mins:
The less frequent 'connection' services run from Nottingham to some of its smaller suburbs, for example the Ruddington connection, Keyworth connection and the Calverton connection. A few services with conventional numbering still remain on smaller services around local areas, for example the 23 in Ilkeston.
In Derby, trent barton run some urban services, such as the non-stop 'spondon flyer' service, and 'the Mickleover' and 'the allestree'. There are then a number of longer distance services for example 'swift' to Uttoxeter and 'the sixes' to Belper and Matlock with their unusual numbering system: 6.1, 6.2, 6.3, 6.4 and 6.X. the 'villager' services run south to Burton on Trent with another unusual numbering system, V1 V2 V3 V4 and a number of services run north towards Ilkeston and Heanor such as the 'black cat' and 'H1'.
trent barton then operate a number of express services around the East Midlands, such as the 'red arrow' service that takes customers (the emphasis at Trent Barton being on them not just being passengers) from Nottingham to Derby faster than they could go by car or even train. 'pronto' connects Nottingham, Mansfield and Chesterfield up to every 15 minutes (operated jointly with Stagecoach), and the X38 connects Derby and Burton on Trent in just 25 minutes. Now the X38 runs every 15 minutes to comply with Arriva's Town Linx (operated jointly with Arriva Midlands), and services like the Bingham 'xprss', Long Eaton xprss and commuter xprss run direct from Nottinghams outer suburbs into Nottingham. The transpeak service is trent barton's longest distance service, from Nottingham through Derby, Belper, Matlock, Bakewell, Buxton and Stockport to Manchester.
Towards the northern end of the transpeak route, trent barton also operate a small number of services around Buxton town, and the 'skyline 199' service from Buxton to Stockport and Manchester Airport.
Many of the more popular services operate through to 3am on Saturday and Sunday mornings.
From 24 July 2011, Indigo will become the UK's first commercial 24 hour bus route. Operating upto every 30 mins (not all of the route) 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Trent Barton's holding company, Wellglade, also owns a number of other East Midlands bus operators - Kinchbus, Notts & Derby, Midland General, Derby Community Transport and T M Travel. Notts & Derby and Midland General are revivals of old bus operators' names.
Kinchbus is based in Loughborough and was formerly an independent company established by Gilbert Kinch and better known for coach operations than stage carriage. It operates various local services around Loughborough, Route 2 from Leicester to Loughborough and Skylink from Derby to Loughborough and Leicester, via East Midlands Airport. It has a fleet of about fifty buses, (although their entry in Leicestershire Bus Web lists 44 vehicles).
Notts & Derby is a bus operator, operating mainly subsidised services under contract to Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire county councils. It also operates services to the University of Derby's campuses in Derby and Buxton under the Unibus brand. Notts & Derby uses Trent Barton depots for its vehicles which are mainly former Trent Barton buses e.g. Paladins, Excels and now some Solos. They also operate double deckers from Lothian for school contracts. Up until recently, they operated C723NNN (Leyland Olympian/ECW) which was the last bus bought by Trent when it was part of NBC. This has since been withdrawn and will be sold by auction in July
Derby Community Transport provides specialized transport for disabled passengers and was originally an independent operation based at Trent's Meadow Road depot.
From 7 January 2010 Wellglade took control of TM Travel, based at Halfway, near Sheffield. This brought over 100 additional vehicles into the Wellglade fleet.
In summer or autumn 2011, Trent Barton will merge the Buxton division with Bowers Coaches, to form a new company called High Peak.[2] The new company will run all services previously run by Bowers and the Buxton division of Trent Barton, such as the Skyline 199.
The new operator will operate from Dove Holes and will have a combined fleet of 50 buses and around 100 employees. All the staff currently employed by the two operators will transfer to the new operation and no jobs will be lost. It is expected that High Peak will start operating in the late summer or early autumn as soon as the necessary Operating Licences have been granted by the Traffic Commissioner.[3][4][5]
'Mango' [1] is a prepay touchless travel card system created by Trent Barton buses. The system works by having a 'Mango' card which the user 'touches on' with at the start of their journey, then 'touches off' at the end. This operates in a very similar way to Transport for London's Oyster card scheme.
This allows for exact fare pricing as your price is calculated by the GPS position of the bus and the passenger's choice of disembarkation point. Users of the 'Mango' card are charged 25% less than the normal cash fare for their journey. A number of card types are available: Adult, Child, B_Line, Student and 16-19. The B_Line card offers Derbyshire students half price fares on bus journeys, the 16-19 year old and student cards both offer a 35% discount and feature different background artwork.
The 'Mango' system was initially tested on the company's Rainbow 4 and Indigo routes. After this proved successful, Trent Barton proceeded to extend the scheme to more of its services.
Multi-journey travel ticket. Buy ten single journey tickets between the same two points and get three trips free - 13 journeys for the price of ten. No time or distance travel restrictions.
Unlimited one day travel ticket for use on the day of purchase. Valid after 9am on Mondays to Fridays and all day Saturdays and Sundays on all trent barton buses, except pronto and transpeak. Cost: £4.90
Any bus or tram in Nottingham £3.70 day ticket - Travel on any number of buses or trams in Nottingham.
There are the normal single and return tickets which can be used anywhere any time of day. There are also some different tickets for selected routes, such as Red Arrow and Skylink, and through tickets in city centres.
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