Nottingham bus services best in country according to new customer satisfaction survey

SEEING the same friendly face every morning, good value for money and always being on time are just some of the reasons why the people of Nottingham have voted their bus services the best in the country.

Nottingham has come top in the latest Bus Passenger Survey (BPS), published by independent watchdog Passenger Focus, which shows that bus passengers in the city were the most satisfied overall in the country with 92 per cent saying they were pleased with the service provided.

Jeff Cawthorne, 80, of Wollaton, was waiting to catch his bus home from Upper Parliament street yesterday afternoon.

He said: “The buses are fairly good for me. I don’t use the buses that often but when I do I’m always satisfied with the service. They are on time and efficient and easily accessible.”

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Nottingham came miles above other towns in the survey, which revealed that bus passengers in Milton Keynes were the least happy with their service, with only 73 per cent of people saying they were satisfied.

Overall satisfaction averaged 84 per cent with a gulf of 19 percentage points between the highest and lowest area scores. Satisfaction with value for money ranged from 30 per cent to 70 per cent across the areas surveyed, averaging out at 54 per cent.

Kim Brampton, 54, of Broxtowe was also catching a bus from Upper Parliament Street yesterday.

She said the main reason she caught the number 35 was because she could rely on it being on time.

She said: “I don’t have a car so I rely on the buses. There’s several I can get. The drivers are pretty friendly and my buses are reliable and on time.

“Being top in this survey is a nice thing for Nottingham to have achieved.”

Anthony Smith, Passenger Focus chief executive, said he hoped the survey encouraged bus providers which weren’t pleasing all their customers to improve their standards and pointed to Nottingham bus services as the benchmark.

He said: “Each year some 2.3 billion bus journeys are made in England outside of London, meaning that passengers are not satisfied with around 375 million journeys.

“We hope this report will be a call to action for transport authorities and bus companies to better work together to improve things for passengers.

“In particular they should closely examine how the high level of passenger satisfaction in places like Nottingham, Oxfordshire and Devon has been achieved, and then look to replicate it.”

The BPS surveyed 22,000 bus passengers across 20 areas of England and looked at many factors of passengers’ journeys such as punctuality, frequency, helpfulness and attitude of the driver and value for money.