It’s that time of year when there isn’t time to stop for breath.

Last Sunday was Walk the Wight and we provided 18 buses/coaches and drivers as part of our sponsorship for the IW Hospice.  With this being during the summer season and with our increased Sunday service levels, finding staff was not as easy as in past years.  The vast majority were office and engineering staff who were all willing to give up their day off for such a great cause.

This is one of those events when the vast majority of our staff from Head Office in Newport is out early in the morning for a hard day’s driving – something to remind us of the early starts that many of our staff make day in day out to run our regular service.

With so many buses now used on a Sunday, the vehicles for this had to come from our coach fleet, which required a fair bit of juggling.  Our more recently trained staff have automatic only licences, and the majority of the coaches have manual gearboxes, so marrying up drivers and coaches was a logistical exercise in itself.

Mr SV made his usual appearance.  Most people probably assume that the boss gets the easiest jobs and the best vehicle to drive.  However, experience over the years proves that the opposite is the case – leading from the front, by example, and all that!  Mr SV had the fun of winding his way between Alum Bay and Freshwater Bay more times than he cared, and despite the Bay being a favourite spot was glad to end up going to Newport instead by late afternoon!  The coach for this exercise was also one with a gearbox that has 4 gears, then another 4 through a gate in the gearbox – making heavy going of the ups and downs and twists and turns of the West Wight!

This coming weekend is our ‘Bustival’ event at Havenstreet Station – details of which are on the website.  This is a celebration of 80 years of Southern Vectis, but nevertheless is another big task to organise, this time pretty much delegated to our marketing man who is doing a good job of puling it all together while the rest of us are already bogged down by the biggest task of all…

…IW Festival is now less than three weeks away, and this is by far our biggest challenge each year.  Although we plan early, in fact as soon as the previous one finishes, there is much to do in the last few weeks.  Behind the scenes we are busy creating three ticket booths out of old small buses.  Meanwhile, one of our old coaches lives on as our mobile ‘home’ for the event and other events.  A couple of our staff have been busy working on this conversion for months now as and when they have had time, and this too is now nearing completion.

Thirty five buses need to be readied in the next couple of weeks.  Fifteen of them are double deckers we have had mothballed for months since our new ones arrived, but all have to be prepared and checked over before they can be used.  The other twenty are all due from our mainland sister companies, most of them also buses stored since they were displaced by new vehicles over the past few months.  These need to be brought over to the Island next week and prepared too.

The event requires a significant number of non driving staff to carry out a huge range of support activities, and these are all in place, but we still need to do all manner of odd things - like train a number of staff to operate traffic lights on the highway!  Miss SV and Lady SV look after catering for the 5 day period, and have to keep a whole army of staff on the go day and night, so have been taking deliveries of some foods, planning menus, and arranging all manner of other things that we need to keep our staff in fighting form.

Ferries have been booked for visiting buses for some while now, but also for the 300 bar staff who we bring in from London by coach and ship back, all during the critical times when we are at our busiest.  Similarly, we are now sending tickets out for our direct coach services from London into the Island, and for the many people who have been buying their travel tickets over the phone in advance.

All manner of things need to be put in place for festival, from ensuring that our cash is collected, our paying in machines are emptied regularly, and that we not only have enough fuel delivered, but also that the extra deliveries are booked on the already full ferries during the weekend. 

Our man who looks after our old style ticket machines has purple hands at the moment, having spent a couple of days this week changing ribbons in ticket machines ready for our ticket booths and shuttle buses.  We’ve taken delivery of the extra ticket rolls we need for the event, all specially printed with the days of the event to ensure tickets can’t be reused.

Our scheduling team are finalising the allocation of work to drivers, and we are busy building our temporary depot out in the West to run the extra buses from, next to the accommodation we have had booked for a year for our mainland staff staying with us.

There are plenty more things to do and we really are now flat out.

However, two weeks after Festival, Glastonbury calls, and we already have a team lined up and ready to roll down to Somerset as we assist our mainland sister companies in providing shuttle buses for this event for the third year running.

Cowes Week is about 9 weeks away, and we have already started making some new arrangements for that.

Betsival follows not long after!!!

We’ll try and keep blogging on our hectic activities over the summer, but I’m sure you will excuse us if we don’t do so as regularly as we’d like to!

Readers of this blog will know that ‘Disco Dave’ has been resident at Yarmouth for a few weeks now, managing the fall-out from the closure of the Yar Bridge.  His role is to safely guide the route 11 buses as they turn round to the West of the Bridge, and to guide the passengers back and forth across the bridge, which is open to pedestrians.  In addition of course, he is there to look after our customers during a period of confusion!

While Disco Dave was sunning himself down west for a week on holiday, a more junior Dave stepped in for him.  Junior Dave displayed his youthfulness by taking one of our company bicycles out west (we have five of them for transport in various places, usually Newport).  The bike was deployed as a quicker means of crossing the bridge, although Junior did get a good old Isle of Wight ‘Oi, yer carnt ride that there bike on this bridge’ from one of the workmen.  Obediently, he continued using it, but alighted for the river crossing.

Anyway, Disco Dave is now back, and in a misguided display of youthful prowess, decided he too would use the bike.  The result…”saw someone I knew – turned round – waved – yelled allo – hit kerb – over handlebars – sore and bruised”.

So, if you see Disco Dave out west, please don’t distract him while he’s riding the bike.

Sometimes, things are just so much more bother than they should be.  Usually things that are already bother, and which become even more bother.

We have our new timetable to plan commencing 30 August 09.  We have to register it with the Traffic Commissioner in Bristol (except they have to be sent to Leeds, because that’s where the powers that be have ‘centralised’ the administration of registering bus services – why Leeds we wonder every time, briefly distracted by the thought of some committee of civil servants choosing that fine city) and they have to be processed there 56 days before our timetable can start.  That means that by the end of June we have to have written all our timetables, sorted out any consultation we need to make (usually Highways and the IW Council Public Transport people) and sent them off.

So, that’s about 56 days, or eight weeks from now…which means we have eight weeks to decide what we can and cannot run viably, tweak, improve, cut back, or simply dispense with altogether.

This year a number of routes and journeys that are unviable, but which are funded by the Council come back up for tender from the same date (Councils are responsible outside of London for providing ‘socially necessary’ but ‘un remunerative’ routes and journeys).

Its bother – lots of work, continual pondering, brainwaves, and hesitations, as we lurch toward a decision on what we should do.  There are many pluses and minuses from every decision, and we always end up agonizing over the last one or two.

So why is this year even more bother than usual? 

First of all, not far short of half of all our customers are travelling on free passes.  The IW Council has to set a scheme to repay us for their travel.  The new scheme for the year started 1 April 09, but we still don’t know what we are being paid.  It’s actually quite difficult planning service levels which incur very big costs when you don’t know what you are getting from your customers.  Ask any other business how they would manage!

Secondly, we have to calculate all the tender prices for the Council funded routes and journeys at the same time, and as part of the combined process.  In calculating our prices to operate them, we have to give a net price – that is after taking the fares.  Hmmm – we don’t know what the fares are that we are receiving for nearly half of our customer journeys!!!

And finally, from 15 May 09 free travel will no longer be permitted on our 4 Island Breezers or the Island Coaster.  That means that we’ve also got to guess how many passenger journeys will be made after 14 May, but by the end of June, to decide whether to run all or any of them for the remainder of the summer season after 29 August 09.

We still need a few more drivers to keep our staffing levels up.  We could do with a Crystal Ball Gazer too!