Nottingham City Transport (NCT) is the main bus service operating in and around Nottingham city. Recently, there have been a lot of changed to the services which were supposed to improve the service given to us.

*Fares*
The fares of the buses, to me, are very steep. £1.60 for a single and £3.20 for a day rider. This is not too bad if you only catch the bus once in a while, but to do so everyday would cost a fortune.
So NCT offer a pre-paid bus card, which you can buy for a week, a month etc. I'm not sure on pricing so check out their website but a 20 day card for an adult is priced at around £50 now.

*Services*
NCT have many different services that run through most areas of Nottingham. My local service is the new Sky Blue 45, which runs through Mapperley into Gedling.
The new service is supposed to run every 8 minutes, however, they still seem to turn up when they feel like it. I don't catch this bus very often now, as I have gone to another service, but when I am waiting for my bus I time the 45. For the first few days of the new service, the 45 was atleast 5 minutes late.
Also, I often notice that there are 2 buses running together, one behind the other. How this benefits NCT's customer I do not know!
I do not think this service is very reliable which is why I avoid catching it to work.
The buses get busy very easily and seem to take atleast 5 minutes longer than my service to get into the city centre, even when they leave at the same time from the same place.

*State of the buses*
I do catch the 45 into the city centre if I have to and must admit that they are looking a lot cleaner than they used to. The old service used to be disgusting, with rubbish everywhere, and the drivers didn't seem to clean the buses when they stopped at a terminus.
Also, there is a new buggy bay which is a lot bigger than the last one and means that more people with buggies or in wheelchairs can get on the bus and not have to wait for the next, which seemed to be a huge problem with the old service.

*Drivers*
I will state now that I am NOT aiming this at every single NCT driver.
But some of them are terrible at their jobs, have they ever received any customer service training? They don't seem to say hello, please or thank you to people catching the bus. And a lot of them are reluctant to get out of their little cabin and drop the wheelchair ramp. Disgusting!!
Saying this, I have recently seen three different drivers get off the bus and drop the ramp for a man in a wheelchair. Hopefully they have received some new training!

Overall, the NCT buses have improved quite a bit over the past couple of months and, hopefully, these improvements will continue in order for customers to receive an even better service. In my opinion, the fares that NCT charge are way too expensive for someone only catching 2 buses a day and I avoid the 45 for this reason. There are many other reasons that I avoid these buses but I don't want to put the service down too much, as these are mainly due to personal experiences with the company.