Nottingham City Transport

Nottingham City Transport (NCT) is the major bus operator of the city of Nottingham, England. NCT operates extensively within Nottingham as well as beyond the city boundaries into Nottinghamshire county. Publicly owned, it is today the second largest municipal bus company in the United Kingdom after Lothian Buses in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Horse-drawn buses operated in Nottingham from 1848. The Nottingham and District Tramways Company Limited opened its first routes in 1878 with horse-drawn trams, and experimented with steam traction a few years later. The company was taken over by Nottingham Corporation Tramways in 1898. Electrification followed, with the first electric trams operating in January 1901 and within two years over 100 trams were in service on eight lines. The first motorbuses were introduced in 1906.

The Nottingham trolleybus system was inaugurated in 1927. By 1930 a number of routes had been converted from trams to trolleybuses. A new bus depot was opened on Parliament Street in June 1929 and is still in use today.

By 1935 the trolleybus fleet had reached its peak at 106 vehicles, making it the largest fleet in the country.^{[citation needed]} The last tram ran in September 1936. World War II brought reduced services, economy measures (including diluting diesel with creosote) and blackout screens on vehicles. Before the war some diesel-engined buses were introduced, although large scale deliveries of buses did not take place until after the war. The advent of diesel services enabled the last petrol-engined buses to be withdrawn.

By the end of the 1950s, trolleybuses were in decline, the last new trolleybus joining the fleet in 1952 reaching a maximum fleet of 155 vehicles. The first one-man operated bus appeared in 1951. Trolleybuses were withdrawn between April 1965 and July 1966, and the West Bridgford UDC Transport undertaking came under Nottingham's control in 1968. One-man operation started to come into force in January 1970 and by 1977 nearly all services were one-man operated. In 1974 it was renamed City of Nottingham Transport and by 1976 an all-time peak of 494 operated vehicles was reached.

To comply with the Transport Act 1985, in 1986 the assets were transferred to a new legal entity. However the company effectively remained in public ownership as Nottingham City Council held full equity of the new entity. In 1988 Stevenson's Bus Services, Ilkeston was purchased and formed a subsidiary company. Erewash Valley Services Limited. These services were integrated with the main company in 1990.

In 1991 South Notts Bus Company was purchased for £1, giving NCT a route from Nottingham to Loughborough and a garage at Gotham. In 1997 Pathfinder (Newark) Limited was purchased, giving NCT a presence in the north of the county. Fleet names are retained within the company but both South Notts and Pathfinder liveries are now extinct, although routes into Clifton and into South Nottinghamshire have navy line branding, taken from the navy blue livery of South Notts.

Despite many offers to buy, Nottingham City Council retained 100% ownership in NCT until May 2001, when 5% of the shares were issued to Transdev. This was related to the Nottingham Express Transit operating contract being awarded to Arrow Light Rail, a consortium between Transdev (later Veolia Transdev), Nottingham City Transport, Bombardier, Carillion, Galaxy and Innisfree. The consortium was contracted to build and operate the light rail for 30.5 years since 9 March 2004, but the contract was ripped up in 2011 when Tramlink Nottingham was selected as the preferred bidder for the construction of Phase 2 of the light rail. The last day of operations of Arrow Light Rail was 16 December 2011.