I’ve never liked getting the bus.

Their irregularity and the number you have to catch to get to the place you want to go to have always put me off.

However, in December, Nottingham and Derby city councils launched the Ride transport app, with one of the team members involved in its creation describing it as ‘revolutionary’.

The app, endorsed by the East Midlands Combined Authority (EMCCA), collates real-time information on public transport services and serves as a journey planner for travel across the entire region.

And I thought I should put it to the test.

Does it work? Is it all it makes out to be? How easily can it navigate me from Derby to Nottingham on the bus? Could it change my opinion on buses for the better? There was only one way to find out. 

I punched in our office address in Nottingham from my address in Derby. Immediately, it showed me a variety of options as to how to get there – including a ‘multi-mode’ option, where cycling was included.

But with no bike at my disposal, I opted for the top result – the sixes 6.3 from Allestree to Derby bus station, the Red Arrow to QMC, and the i4 from QMC to Maid Marian Way.

The 6.3 wasn’t due to arrive for another 15 minutes or so, and the app told me I didn’t need to leave the house for a few more minutes, which gave me enough time to potter about a bit before making the short walk to the bus stop.

I arrived just in time – the app’s ability to predict my walking speed so that I arrived within a minute of the bus was rather uncanny.

I was impressed already. Don’t get me wrong, Google could do the same thing. But what Google doesn’t do is show you exactly where the bus is or when it will arrive. I zoomed out on the map and found the 6.3 icon, hovering on Duffield Road.

With that, I knew exactly how long I should be waiting. And sure enough, as the icon made its way onto the road on which I was waiting on the map, so the big yellow bus appeared on the horizon at exactly the same time.

It was quite exciting, really.

On board, I purchased myself a zigzag day ticket – £8.80 to Nottingham and back, practically door-to-door.

Ride does provide an option to buy and store tickets within the app – but not within your journey planner.

Purchasing tickets requires minimising your navigator – which stays open in a tab at the bottom of the screen while you access the rest of the app – and finding your way to the ‘tickets’ section.

But using this function requires knowledge of exactly which bus you’re getting and which company provides it – something I do not have.

In any case, because the tickets across the different bus companies are not standardised, clicking on the respective operator’s icons diverts you to an external browser.

For now, for me, as someone with no online accounts with any operator, it looks like continuing to buy my tickets physically is the way to go.

As the bus trundled towards Derby, I continued to check the app. As I’d hoped, it recognised that I was on the bus, because the bus’s GPS signal and my phone’s GPS signal matched. That meant that when I looked at the named stops on the route, it showed me exactly which ones I was between, meaning I knew exactly when to press the stop button.

When we approached town, I looked at the map again. It showed a 6.4 sixes bus approaching us in the opposite direction. I looked up – and there it was.

I couldn’t help but grin to myself. It felt like I had a Call of Duty UAV in my hands.

Unfortunately, because the app does not have the power to make buses run on time – only to allow you to see how late they may be – we were two minutes overdue when we arrived at Derby bus station.

I hurried inside, but as I got to bay 5, the Red Arrow was already pulling away.

Not the app’s fault – but maybe a warning or a safety buffer when suggesting which bus to catch could be useful, considering I may have had something urgent I needed to get to Nottingham for.

Luckily, I didn’t – but the app did say the next bus was going to be 23 minutes away, which was slightly frustrating. This was at odds with the screen inside the bus station, which indicated that the bus was only 18 minutes away.

Then, within five minutes, it had turned up, and I was on, before it pulled away five minutes later again. I do recall the app telling me that there was Red Arrow leaving at this time when I first got on the sixes – but that information had disappeared from the app at some point.

Once I was on the Red Arrow, I was flying. It took me to QMC, where I hopped off, and then, just like the app told me to, I got on the i4. 

Conveniently, it had pulled up right behind the Red Arrow, so I did not have to wait at all. With a lack of thinking time, though, I asked the bus driver for a return ticket, which he told me they didn’t provide, and then for a ‘citysaver’ – all the while thinking I was getting on an NCT bus.

It was only when I rather humiliatingly realised that the i4 was also a trentbarton that I pulled out my zigzag and the driver could set off again. It would be useful if the app told me which tickets I d need for each bus – and which operator operates which service.

But, that all being said, within 10 minutes I was off the bus again and had a short walk to the office door. I’d barely stopped to think – and I’d arrived. 

When I drive to Nottingham, I usually park around 15 minutes from the city centre and walk in, to avoid parking fees.

But this had taken me practically from door-to-door in not much longer than it’d taken me to drive myself. And with the app, I knew exactly which buses to take, what time to leave and what time I should arrive.

I’ve never liked getting the bus.

But maybe I’ll consider it next time.