Here's some news that pretty much nobody else will care about apart from me: Nottingham City Transport are to end their night service buses from the 24th November, so I hear.
The services are to be replaced by buses travelling along the popular Go2 routes after midnight on Friday or Saturday nights only.
It's hardly surprising, the service must have been making a huge loss for months. Barely anybody uses the things. So it's not really their fault if they cancel them, right?
Well, wrong. Plenty of people would use them, but the operation of the services over the last few years has been a joke.
Firstly, the price. It has risen by 50p every year recently. It now stands at either £3 or £3:50 for a single ticket, I can't remember exactly because I've got a bus pass. But either way, that's a ridiculous amount of money. The only people who are going to pay it are customers who regularly get the bus on their own (read: me). If there's two or more of you, you might as well get a taxi at that price, and you'll be home a lot sooner too.
So it's hardly surprising that the amount of people using the service now has completely nosedived. Why wasn't the price kept at a more competitive level, hmm?
Secondly, marketing. Or rather, the lack of it. Hardly anybody has ever known about the existence of the night services. People don't even know of them as an option. It wouldn't have been hard, NCT: put up adverts for each Nightrider service on the applicable daytime bus routes that go to the same areas - so - advertise the 99 Nightrider service along all the daytime busses that go to Clifton, Ruddington and West Bridgford, alongside all your adverts for Skylink services and sex advice clinics.
So, the Save The Nightrider Services campaign starts here. If nothing else, I need them to get home from work during the week or I'll struggle to keep being able to work at Rescue Rooms. Are you listening, Nottingham City Transport?
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