Much has happened since I last blogged. In practical terms we have completed another IW Festival, so smoothly that we almost missed it. The team based in Newport has really got Festival mastered these days. This year was a busy affair, with more journeys made on our buses, and large numbers of people brought in directly from across the country by coach. We’re happy with the results, but already working on more ideas and refinements for 2011, and looking at how we can apply our experiences to this year’s Bestival.

Just as staff from across Go Ahead’s Southern bus companies help with Festival, so we help out at their events. So our hardened team of travelers has been to the Rosebowl for the England cricket test match, and have spent a few days in a hot and sweaty Glastonbury.

Behind the scenes it’s been a very busy period. We now have a new contract in place with IW Council to provide 44 school buses and coaches from September, and are hard working to make sure we have the right number of drivers for the contract, and of course sufficient buses and coaches. Buses are starting to arrive and will be followed by some more coaches shortly. All the staff have to be in place and ready to roll for our test run on 6 September, then on 7 September the real thing starts.

We also have an agreement to take students from across the Island to IW College each day, using our network of regular buses.

Following our tribunal hearing into the amount we get paid for free travel by pass holders, things are more stable in terms of revenue. It was agreed that we should be being paid more money and that is now sorted. Sadly it still doesn’t allow for the extra costs of running enough buses to carry nearly half as many passengers as we used to under the free travel scheme, so it’s not all good news. Indeed, from September we are having to make further reductions in the less well used parts of the bus network.

IW Council are clearly under a huge amount of pressure, and it was welcome news when the asked us to provide a sizeable chunk of otherwise non-viable bus services for the coming year. Sadly there isn’t enough money to pay for everything people want, or indeed have had to date, but on the whole the Island still has a much better level of service compared to similar areas across the country.

There’s a lot of talk about Student Rider being scrapped at the moment and all sort of suggestions as to what we should be doing. The Student Rider scheme is one we have to participate in by law, and IW Council alone set the fare levels. We haven’t been served notice, and until such time as (if) notice is served upon us the scheme carries on. If the council gives us notice, then we’ll look at our offer to young people and decide what to do. For now though, it’s business as usual with Student Rider.

Last night was the awards evening for the Hants and IW Sustainable Business Awards.  We pitched up to hear how we’d done in the large business category.  The judging process was detailed and involved visits from their auditors, lots of questions, and supplying evidence of our work.

We were delighted to win the category, but even more surprised to be crowned as the Sustainable Business of the Year 2010 in Hampshire and the .Isle of Wight.

The awards are run by the Sustainable Business network, who support business to become more sustainable, economically, socially and environmentally. 

Their website explains all…

http://www.the-sbp.co.uk/Home.aspx?ChannelID=26&PostingID=155

Tonight was the Young Chamber awards evening on the Island. This is a nationwide programme that started on the Island and is a great introduction to the world of commerce for school students.

Students from six schools on the Island worked their way through five challenges set for them by Island employers. One of those was provided by Southern Vectis.

It’s a great opportunity for young people to understand commerce, gain experience and network.

The quality of their work and their initiative and attitude was a great credit to them all.

It’s great for us to put something back into the next generation of businesswomen and men. So many of us owe someone somewhere for giving us an opportunity in life, and being involved in Young Chamber is a great way of putting something back.

Have used Greyhound to get to London for business twice this week. The inclusive package that includes our buses, the Hoverctaft and Greyhound is popular, with customers using it on every journey i’ve made.

The comparison has to be the train. For meetings in the West End I found Greyhound better than the train. The hovercraft literally whisks you acroos the solent in munutes, and then you are pretty much straight off to London. Once th coach has left Portsmouth itself it’s straight to Victoria without any further stops. The journey time is good by comparison to the train, and with a booked seat you’re guaranteed somewhere to sit and either read the complimentary newspapers or do a bit of work.

Wireless worked well, so able to get all my emails knocked out before getting back to the Island.

Very pleasant and helpful drivers on all four journeys and a nice travelling environment on board.

Definately a reccommendation from me if you’re heading to the West End from the Island or Portsmouth.

www.greyhounduk.co.uk

The last few weeks have certainly been busy. We have two sets of tenders to complete for IW Council, the first a huge contract for school buses across the Island, and the second for bus routs and journeys that are not viable without an element of financial support.

Both take time to work through, and the school contract in particular is very detailed and requires a lot of background planning even to tender. At the same time we’ve been negotiating the transport of students to IW College. All these contracts take effect from early September, coinciding with our next timetable change.

We’re still waiting for our appeal to be heard in relation to the level of payments we receive for free travel made by the over 60s and disabled. We’ve been waiting for over 13 months now, so for over a year we have been unable to be sure what we are paid for about 40% of our customers. That would make running any business pretty difficult!

Sunday was the IW Bus Museum’s spring ’Running Day’ – a great opportunity for people to ride out on buses as many as 71 years old. It’s a great reminder to those of us who work in the bus industry of just how much the vehicles and the technology have advanced. Even buses of the 60s are archaic compared to nowadays. Although buses became much more modern around the end of the 60s, the progress of development was relatively gentle until the latest generation of low floor buses. Our current buses are much more sophisticated, managed by computers and electronics, and generally much more complicated! It’s nice to see so many of our senior staff at events like this too, showing just how much passion they have in the business of running buses.

Next Sunday is ‘Walk the Wight’ when we have pretty much every available bus and coach on ‘hire’ to the organizers, the Earl Mountbatten Hospice. We donate the vehicles each year to make this enormous event – basically a sponsored walk across the Island – work, taking people to and from the start and finish in huge numbers. A few of our staff are walking this year, but the majority has volunteered to drive all those buses instead.

It’s off to London this coming week, so a good opportunity to sample the Greyhound coach, hovercraft and bus package that we have put together. Passenger numbers in just the first week were impressive, and it’ll be good to see how the direct coach product compares to the usual disjointed train journey. I’ll report back!

IW Festival is now well and truly on the immediate horizon. We have buses booked from a small number of other mainland bus companies, Emsworth and District are back after a gap, Reading Buses are new to Festival, and Velvet are joining us too, a new operator with some old faces!, and our own casual staff and managers and supervisors from across Go Ahead’s South Coast bus companies ready to join us. Buses are already arriving on the Island from Go South Coast’s reserve fleet, and we are busy readying them for action. Our coach unit is busy arranging the direct coaches from across England and Wales too, bringing a significant number of festival goers in directly by coach. All this takes a fair amount of organizing, especially as we are still taking bookings for a couple weeks more.

Planning for Bestival has now moved on to, and here too we are responsible for the coaches direct from across England and Wales to the event. Bookings are coming in fast, but we have a set of coach operators already in use for Festival, who will be working with us on Bestival too, along with our local friends at Kardan Travel and Seaview Services.

Last year we worked closely with the organizers of the ‘Summer Madness’ event behind Carisbrooke Castle, headlined by Madness themselves, and this year they have announced that Paul Weller will be headlining. We’ve had the call already and are pleased that we and they we very happy with how it all worked last year, so we’re working together on the transport again this year.

We’re already geared up for our first mainland event after IW Festival which is of course Glastonbury. Once again our ‘A’ team of drivers from across the company will be heading off, again in some of the fleet of South Coast buses set aside for events, and will be running some of the services for Glastonbury’s Festival goers too.

The season’s definitely underway now!!!

While Mr SV was ‘abroad’ discussing the planning for the new ticket machines, the real fun was happening on Ryde Esplanade – just on the Esplanade though!

I missed the spectacle of one of Greyhound’s iconic and gorgeously liveried coaches, and one of our beautiful green buses, flanking a fully inflated Hovercraft on the hoverpad at Ryde. I’m told it was more than one hovercraft actually, as they needed a second shoot, and had to let the hover depart and the next one arrive. I’m told the departure of the first Hovercraft made some spectacular unplanned shots!

Anyway, what was it all about…
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For those who follow the blog, you’ll know that we have got together with Greyhound in the UK and Hovertravel, to launch an integrated ticket package, which launches on 1 June. This was a photo shoot to promote the new offer.

The deal is great – get on a bus anywhere on the Island and bus down to Ryde – straight onto the next Hovercraft, across to Southsea in minutes – onto a Greyhound coach to SW1 London.

All this comes from just £8 each way (plus the 50p booking fee) each way. Prices vary with demand, the average fare being £14 each way. Newport to SW1 takes less than 3 hours using this package.

To find out more or to book visit the Greyhound UK website at www.greyhounduk.com

We’re hopeful that this is just the start of a great relationship with Greyhound and Hovertravel, and that we’ll be able to add all sorts of tailored and exciting packages for both islanders and Londoners.

The current ticket machines were state of the art when they were introduced about 15 years ago, but are now both at the end of their physical life, but also unable to do the things we want them to. We already have to issue all our tickets on paper rather than being able to issue day and longer period tickets on cards. The old card readers had become so unreliable that we have already had to remove them.

Like the rest of Go Ahead’s deregulated bus businesses, we’re in the process of ordering and planning the introduction of new state of the art ticket machines. While it probably sounds like a very simple process, it’s actually very detailed and demanding.

All our machines are programmed to be able to talk to a main server. Every driver has a little black box which is a memory, which he or she uses in the ticket machine on the bus they are working. Each day they ‘download’ the memory box at one of our depots, and it transfers all manner of information into our systems.

That means that we have a single system, which has to be replaced lock stock and barrel in one hit. We have to be able to turn one system off, buses and back office, and fit and turn on the new system, working properly between our last bus in (0130hrs) and our first one going back out again (0430hrs).

In practical terms, our whole fleet of buses needs to be rewired and refitted with all the plates that carry the machines and the power supplies, such that we can effect an ‘overnight’ change to the whole fleet. At least that way we only need to visit every bus at every one of our 7 depot and yards across the Island to swap machines and initialize them!

But we’ve also got to train about 200 staff to use them - and not too far in advance that they will have forgotten when we go live!

All our staff will need issuing with new cards, instructions etc.

Our engineers need to know how to maintain the machines.

That’s the bit that simply replaces our old machines with shiny new ones. The real opportunities though, will come in the following weeks and months.

The new machines are able to carry many more ticket types than the current ones. At the moment the machines just cannot carry any new ticket types unless we remove old ones. We often find ourselves restricted in offering new products and special offers simply because we can’t physically ticket them.

The machines will also be ‘smart card’ enabled, so that we can accept electronic passes like London’s ‘Oyster’ card. What’s more, there is an new transport industry standard which means that they will be able to talk to other operators’ machines.

Initially, we’ll just be concentrating on getting the machines working to deliver the same tickets as we do now, but we’ll be rolling out new products and facilities once that has happened.

The new machines can ‘read’ the free travel cards for over 60s and the disabled, and everyone will be able to have their own card to ‘load’ with travel.

There are all sorts of opportunities to offer more flexible tickets, like 5 days travel where you can choose the days. This one will be great for people who work part of the week, or make regular but not daily journeys.

There are all sorts of opportunities to sell joint products with attractions and other businesses and organisations, and to market offers to card holders. In many ways this could be one of the most significant opportunities that we have in the next few years, making travel better value, more flexible, and more tailored to customers.

The machines should be in use by the end of the year.

Our revised timetables and routes from this coming Sunday make a few subtle changes.

They are more about trying to make our buses more reliable than anything else, while also matching our costs to the revenue we receive. These days around 50% of our customers either don’t pay us or pay us a reduced rate. We should be no worse off through government legislated repayment schemes, but we are actually significantly under paid. It’s a real nonsense, but in 5 years we have gone from carrying 5.36 million people a year to 8.5 million, and managed to see our business become a lot less healthy!

It’s now about 4 years since we recast our bus network, and in that time traffic hold ups have become worse. As a result we’ve been working away behind the scenes for a few months now, working out how to make our routes and individual journeys more reliable.

Routes 1, 5 and 9 have been badly hit by traffic problems, and we have evolved a plan to deal with them.

Route 1 will have slightly fewer buses, but still 8 an hour between Newport and Cowes and vice versa. However, each of them will get slightly more time. In addition, we now have an extra coach that specifically takes students from Newport bus Station to IW College each morning, relieving the strain on route 1 at an already busy and traffic hit time of the day.

Routes 5 and 9 have been suffering from worsening reliability coming into Newport along Fairlee Road. Route 5 now drops from every 15 to 20 minutes slightly earlier in the early evening, and gets an additional bus from one of our school contracts just after the morning rush hour. This bus drops into the timetable for one round trip to East Cowes and back, allowing the regular three buses extra time to ‘recover’.

We’ve got similar arrangements on route 9, where an extra bus from our school fleet appears at both ends of the day, again relieving the 7 regular buses. The downside with the extra buses on routes 5 and 9 is that at least for now they won’t be ‘low floor - easy access’ buses, but for now we’ve judged that it’s better to have reliable buses than risk having some of them missing altogether as they get progressively delayed. On route 9 we also now have an extra bus for Medina High School and this is taking pressure off the main service too at both ends of the school day.

Route 8 is a reall bug bear - its unreliability is the stuff legends are made of! The problem is that since we introduced the revised and amalgamated route (to make it more reliable!) we haven’t had a signgle week where it hasn’t been subject to at least one, and in many weeks multiple diversions and roadwork related delays! Although everything says we should wait for a good run finally, then review it, the need to give 56 days notice to change routes and timetables means we have decided to take decisive action (even though it could come right naturally!). From Sunday it will adopt the same route as routes 2 and 3 in Sandown, giving it considerably more time. Guess what though - the main road into Sandown is scheduled to be closed for a week soon - perhaps the number 8 is a jinx?

Finally, our fast X10 Bembridge - St Helens - Brading -Newport and X11 Totland - Freshwater - Newport coach journeys start next week. They will run at commuter times on Monday to Fridays for a trial period suing school coaches around their school trips.

Great meeting with our friends at the IW Steam Railway yesterday morning. They are hosting Bustival again, which was the public event we put on last year to celebrate our 80th anniversary. It was a great success so will be back again on 18 April 2010. It’s a free day out for all the family, at the steam railway’s Havenstreet Station, the hub of their operations. The railway itself is a fantastic day out, and we’ll be bringing a range of vehicles old and new, side stalls , and displays from a few of the partners we work with. Hope to see you there! there’s a free shuttle service using open tops from Newport Bus Station too!

Spent the day at the Wight2Bheard conference today - a conference where young people get to air their views and raise issues. Really good day - lots of voiceforous customers with complaints about customer service, service levels and prices.

Nice to be able to explain what determines our fares, given that much is down to the underfunding of the government’s free travel scheme for pensioners - similar story with service levels. On customer service much of what the young people want is exactly what we want ourselves. It was really good to quickly get to a point where we were talking about solutions rather than just problems.

We’ll be working with the IW Youth Council in the near future hopefully, helping us to understand our relationship with young people, how we communicate with them and how we treat them.