‘Revolutionary’ public transport app ‘possibly one of best in world’ launched in Nottingham

A ‘revolutionary’ new app which brings together all of Nottingham’s public transport services has been launched across the East Midlands.

‘Ride’, a collaboration between Nottingham City Council, Derby City Council and the East Midlands Combined County Authority (EMCCA), will allow users to book train, bus, tram, Enterprise hire cars, e-bike and e-scooter tickets in the same place.

Operating in a similar way to Uber and Google Maps, the app presents users with a map of the city based on their location – with every form of public transport in their vicinity detailed using coloured icons.

This means that users can see their nearest bus stop, tram stop, e-bike or e-scooter as soon as they open the app.

The app – which has been in the making for two years – also has real-time information on buses, even going as far as to show the buses moving along the road, accurate to within a minute, so users can track their exact movements .

At a ceremony to announce its launch on Friday, December 12th, Nottingham City Council’s Executive Member for Transport Linda Woodings said: “I think it’s absolutely fantastic.

“My friend, who tried it, is a social worker who doesn’t drive and she absolutely loves it, how it helps her get around from appointment to appointment around the city.

“Another of my friends is a schoolteacher who’s been using it and says how incredible it is, how it’s cut time from her journey into work as well as home from work.”

The app also serves as a journey planner. 

When a destination is entered into the search bar, the app will, like Google Maps, suggest different options for travelling across a range of routes, including identifying what time the user should leave to walk to , for example, a bus stop or an e-bike.

After that, the user can purchase a ticket within the app – which will give them the option to choose the cheapest option, not just the fastest – and then use that ticket, stored in a ticket folder, to scan on a bus.

Jorgen Pedersen, Nottingham City Council’s principal transport planner and the app’s technical architect, said: “I think it is quite a big thing, – revolutionary – in terms of the quality of data, and the ability to essentially use it for every part of the journey.

“Being able to identify a ticket, pay for a ticket and then use that ticket is actually tremendously complicated. It’s certainly one of the premier apps certainly in the UK at the moment and possibly the world.

“Our philosophy is that if its not accurate, people won’t want to use it. Everything we’re trying to dois from a user experience point of view. It’s probably the only one in the UK right now that does what it does. I think there’s no reason everybody shouldn’t use it.”

Currently, while focused on Derby and Nottingham city, the app can be used outside of the city boundaries for any bus services that traverse between city and county, and works even for services as far as Grantham and Mansfield.

When EMCCA takes over transport for the East Midlands region early next year, the app will be rolled out to the whole of Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire fully.

In addition, focus in 2026 will be on introducing accessibility components to the app, including technology which can recommend accessible routes or, for example, identify buses with step-free access.

Derby City Council’s director of city sustainability, Verna Bayliss, said: “This is a really impressive milestone. This has been an accumulation of quite a few years of really hard work.

“It’s going to make our lives so much easier. It makes travel smooth, seamless and flexible and it makes sustainable travel an easier and more attractive choice.”

The app, funded by the Department for Transport (DfT)’s Future Transport Zones grant, is costing a total of £4m to make, of which £1.5m has been spent already.

It integrates existing apps into one place, so that users don’t need to use host apps like the NCTX or Trent Barton for buses or Lime and Dott for e-bikes and e-scooters respectively.

Prices for services are the same on Ride as they are on host apps, however.

Bus services on Ride include Arriva Derby, Central Connect, Centre Bus, CT4N, Kinchbus, NCT, Notts & Derby buses, Stagecoach, trentbarton.

In Nottingham, Robin Hood cards can be scanned and used within the app.

Mobility options can be selected and deselected for those which are not relevant, so if someone doesn’t want to see certain bus services area, they can toggle them within the app.

It will work for the current operating system of a phone and the previous two, and won’t cause devices to work more slowly than usual despite the amount of data used in tracking hundreds of transport services across the region.

East Midlands Mayor Claire Ward, who was present at the app launch, said: “This is an app that will fundamentally change the way people will move around our cities. When you make movement easier you unlock opportunity.

“This fits around my commitment to design a transport system that is for people. For too long, transport systems have been designed around infrastructure and around what is easiest to operate, not around what is easiest to use. It should be that your journey works around your life – not the other way around.”

Cllr Woodings told the LDRS: “It’s a really big deal. What will make people use the bus is reliability. With this, you know your bus is coming. We don’t have live-time bus stops all around the city, and where we don’t we’re going to go out and show people how to use the app so that they don’t have a wasted wait at a stop. We’re really hoping it will increase patronage of buses, especially in the winter, in the bad weather. 

“This app is so clever and so accurate that I really hope that people will have confidence in the information they’re getting on it and choose the bus and choose other forms of transport as well. We really hope it will become peoples preferred app.

“People may carry on using an individual app if they only have one bus service they use, but if ever they need to mix and match, or if a service goes down for whatever reason, they can find another route to get to where you need to go.”