Saturday was the six monthly public meeting organised by IW Bus Users Group.

Their meetings are rarely quiet affairs, and often attended by groups of bus users unhappy with decision of ours or the IW Council.

As ever Mr SV turned out for an ear bashing, this time about the changes to route 4 between Ryde and East Cowes.  Route 4 has been struggling to meet its costs of operation for a while, and the continuing reduction in the payments we receive from ‘free’ passenger journeys has made the situation worse, especially as this route carries a very high proportion of ‘free’ customers.

The long winding route, taking in Haylands and Binstead Estate in particular, has made the route particularly unattractive to people, especially full fare high value customers, travelling from Ryde to East Cowes.

So, drastic surgery is required.  From next week the route will run directly from Ryde to East Cowes along the main roads, also missing out the Hefford Road area of East Cowes.

This does two things.  Firstly, it reduces the time taken so that we only need to use two buses to operate the route instead of three.   This is the equivalent of a six figure saving over the year.  But secondly, the fast direct route should also attract back customers wanting to travel between the two towns.

We have put in place a replacement route between school times for Haylands and Binstead Estate, but unsurprisingly local users are unhappy with the extent of the timetable.  This is viable because it uses a school vehicle already in our operation.

Hefford Road is difficult to serve as it isn’t practically near enough to any other bus routes that could be diverted without costing an additional bus.

Residents of all three areas were at the meeting today.  Some understood the difficulties we have, others didn’t!    It’s not really surprising though that some didn’t want to hear what we had to say.  Many people, especially pensioners, rely on buses as a public service.  The thing is that in the UK buses aren’t run as a public service.  In the mid 80’s the then government decided to sell off the state owned bus companies and create a system where bus companies job was to run profitable services.  The idea was that local councils should determine and fund non-profitable routes that were socially necessary.  Despite different political governments, that hasn’t changed

It actually works really well on profitable routes.  Bus companies have the incentive to provide high levels of service, attracting people out of cars and onto buses in high numbers – look at our main routes such as 1, 2/3, 5 and 9 to mention the most frequent.

The problem is that there simply isn’t sufficient money for Councils to pick up the tab for all those areas that need bus services but where they are not able to be provided profitably.  For many years the island did have a very comprehensive network of bus services in all of those areas, funded by the Council.

The irony is that it is free travel that has really killed that off.  While free travel is a great idea, and is great for those who live on profitable bus routes in busy areas, the contrast elsewhere couldn’t be different.  With bus companies being paid only around half the fare they used to get, unless passenger numbers double then the routes become unviable as the income drops.  At the same time as the payment to bus companies has fallen, so Councils have found that they have been underfunded by the government for free travel.  The result is that Councils are quite literally running out of money to pay for unprofitable bus routes.

One good thing came out of Saturday’s meeting though.  The Council Leader came on behalf of the Council, and we agreed on the need to look at how the Council’s Wightbus operations could better be coordinated with our network of profitable routes.  Hopefully this will allow more communities to have access to ‘feeder’ bus services.

The IW Festival website www.isleofwightfestival.com countdown tells us there are just 81 days to the start of IW Festival 2009…that’s less than 12 weeks!

So as you can probably imagine, work is well underway on making preparations.  The five days from the Thursday to the Monday over the Festival weekend are our busiest of the year by a long way.

This year we are using around 33 extra buses, many of them ones we are replacing in our own bus fleet now and in the coming weeks as we receive more of our new Scania double deckers, and coaches for our school fleet.

The remainder is similarly coming from our sister companies Bluestar and Wilts and Dorset who have also been receiving new double deckers.

This makes the planning a lot easier as most of the buses will be with us well before, saving us from having to move buses across the Solent in the busy pre Festival period, and meaning that we can get buses ready comfortably beforehand.

33 is less buses than we have had some years, but with plenty of experience now, we know better just how many buses we really need at the critical times.  Now that we run our school services with a separate fleet of coaches, we also have these available most of the time.

Ironically, having too many buses is a nightmare.  Last year caused difficulties, especially as so many of them were long single deckers.  We ran out of space for them at the Festival site and it gave us headache before and after the busy periods at the Festival site.  This year our extra Festival buses will be based away from the site, enabling things to run smoother.

We have a fair amount of infrastructure to put in place for the Festival, and have our mobile toilets, offices and catering units booked.  We’re now working with the organisers to confirm the metal roadways and barriers that we need laid in the field that becomes our bus station for the event.  We are in the process of re commissioning our mobile ticket buses, converted from three old minibuses, and this year we have an old coach too, kitted out with bunks and other facilities for our staff who pretty much live on the site from Thursday to Monday.

Ticketing is an area we’ve constantly changed over the years, as we try to keep staff to a minimum but also make the systems as fraud proof as we can.  Not only do staff cost money, but we actually get to a point where we physically run out – everyone who can drive we want driving, so the whole army of staff who we need not to drive are in short supply.  Their duties range from manning barriers, to feeding staff, operating traffic lights, issuing tickets, managing queues of people at the ferries and the site, managing the paying in of cash, ensuring buses move safely around the site, to managing the work of the driving staff 24 hours a day for 5 days.  This year a lot more ticketing will be undertaken by drivers on the buses themselves, and we are now preparing all the fittings and machines for these buses – the old style manual ticket machines!  Ticket rolls are on order and due in soon, differently marked for each day in each direction.

We have all of them in place now, and our next job will be to arrange all the extra driving shifts we need over the event.  Our own staff work overtime, but we also use our casual drivers and staff from mainland sister companies to make up the requirements.  A fair number of these will require accommodation on the Island.  Our first job each year is to book the accommodation for them – we actually booked it before last year’s Festival.  Accommodation across the Island is in short supply at Festival so this is a critical job to remember!  Our staff tend to stay in holiday homes in the West of the Island, close to our temporary depot, and where their late night returns from duty don’t bother anyone!

As well as the obvious movement of festival ticket holders to and from the ferries, and in and out of Island towns, we also have a few other movements to cope with.  Our ‘Festival Direct’ coach service collects festival goers from Central London on the Thursday, returning on the Monday, offering a direct service from London right up to the entrance of the campsite.  We also have the highly important task of bringing the bar staff to the event, again from Central London, usually requiring five coaches.

So, much is in hand, but we’re going to be very busy over the next 11 and a bit weeks!

We’re now close to our timetable change on 5 April and busy getting a whole raft of things ready.

The Island Timetable Booklets, School Bus Guide, Guide to Changes and the Needles Breezer leaflets are all due in as I type.

Our Traffic Office are busy writing schedules for drivers now, and producing vast numbers of individual bus stop timetable displays for us to put up.

We’re also tying up the final details of our coach fleet’s work, including the Island Coaster route, and making sure we have the right capacity coaches on the right routes for schools.

While all this is going on we’re also spending lots of time and effort testing and refining our new ‘on line ticketing’ facility on the website.  Hopefully this will be available in a few weeks time, though we are keen to make sure it’s all fully tested first.

It’s a busy time in the garages too, with 11 more brand new Scania double deckers in the course of delivery and preparation, 2 nearly new Mercedes single deckers almost ready to bolster route 9, and three more coaches in various states of preparation for schools and the Island Coaster.

We’ve been looking hard at the independent report we commissioned from Bus Users UK into our operation last year, and have been thinking through measures to address the areas where they thought we could do better.  Some are already done, some relatively easy and simple, but a few require lateral thinking.  Our management team had a good session looking at them all today, and we have an initial plan of action coming together.

At Ryde Bus Station, we are still in a bit of a state of limbo, but are very hopeful that we can reach an agreement to carry on using the facilities for the season.  If we can we have plans ready to give the bus station a real spruce up and provide more information for the public.

In Newport too, we plan to remodel the information office, provide more space in the waiting room, and much more information on display.