We’re still not quite recovered from Bestival yet! Combined with three days of strike action in nine days we were burning the candle at both ends, needing to get buses out very early for service on strike days, and having Bestival buses to run right into the early hours of the mornings.

We’ve just about finished clearing up from Bestival now, and have now taken the eighteen buses over to the mainland that we used for Bestival.

Funnily enough Wednesday was our first de-brief meeting with the guys from bestival, which in reality is a planning meeting for next year! We’re already working on plans to take our Bestival buses to a completely different level. We’re now working on the detail a huge new Bestival bus station, built especially on the Downs for the weekend, with all the infrastructure we need to move the huge number of Bestival goers travelling by bus. We’ll be starting to plan how many buses and staff we need to bring in for next year soon, and booking their accomodation while it is available.

Bestival has a lovely atmosphere, and the fancy dress theme is a central part of it. To add a bit of fun, and make the bus service an integral part of Bestival itself, we’re working on theming the whole operation - staff, infrastructure and buses. The Bestival experience will hopefully begin as soon as people land on the Island!

At Last!

Bestival has come and gone, finally marking the end of our ‘busy period’. These days it generally starts in April when our timetables change for the season and nowadays it includes Festival, Cowes Week, Summer Madness, Bestival and numerous other big events and commitments. They now follow each other one after another, so it’s a highly pressured six months for the team at Southern Vectis who have to make so many things happen over such a concentrated period of time.

Each of the events requires considerable planning and preparation, with many of them overlapping. The last couple of weeks were further complicated by three days of strike action, two of them during Bestival itself.

The team of guys and girls who ensure that everything runs smoothly are one of the organisations special strengths, working all hours and all manner of miracles to make everything happen. The last two weeks have been an incredible strain for everyone, with the prospect of no buses running over Bestival days. In a remarkable feat they managed to deliver a pretty much normal service over all three strike days, including all the extra Bestival services. This was supported by a large number of staff who came to work, who worked overtime, and who rose to the challenge, along with colleagues from the mainland, running the buses was a remarkable achievement. The fact that all of it was done in a positive and determined fashion added to the huge sense of pride and success afterwards.

Bestival itself was a real challenge to us this year. As well as the normal Bestival routine, this year we provided services on the Island for National Express, but the biggest challenge was the Monday exit from the event.

On Monday we moved around 16,000 Bestival goers from the site, alongside our normal service. We reckon that this made Monday our busiest day for decades, bigger than anything we have managed for an event since the 1970 Pop Festival.

The day was a real challenge, taking 12 hours continuous running with every available bus and coach and with every available member of staff working. Even Mr SV took the wheel by mid morning. By the afternoon it was taking over two hours to get through (well round actually) the traffic from Bestival to East Cowes.

We’ve debriefed ourselves now on Bestival, as we do with all these major events, and will be running over the experiences, problems and successes with Bestival organizers too in the near future. The sheer scale of the lift from the event now means that we need to look again at how we can manage such a big movement of people.

Now is a time for catching up on all manner of things, but also for taking time to review aspects of our regular operations in our ‘quiet’ period running up until Christmas. We have Bus Users UK, the national body that represents passenger interests, working closely with us to help identify areas we can improve our services, and to jointly look at new ways in which we can deliver them.

Information at bus stops and interchanges is one area where we are looking hard and critically at what we provide. It has been a major achievement to get a timetable at every bus stop, something that few non metropolitan areas have managed, but we are already looking at how we can build upon that.

We’re looking at ways of boosting capacity on some of our key routes, where passenger numbers continue to rise, but where the amount we receive for free travel doesn’t pay for more buses.

And we’re already looking at making some changes to services from 20 December where we have a need to review what and when we are running. Time never stands still, but at least now we have the chance to have a bit of ‘thinking time’.

Many customers will be aware that the RMT trade union have instructed their 231 members at Southern Vectis to strike on Thursday this week, and next Friday and Saturday.

We have over 300 staff, and only 76 actually voted to srike for ‘a substantial pay rise’.

In the current economic climate we don’t believe it’s right to raise fares. This year we have lost £1million in income from a reduction in the amount paid to us for free travel by IW Council.

While we’d like to make a pay award, this year it just isn’t sensible to do so, and we want to keep fares as they are and protect the number of jobs we can provide.

Our staff have had around 13% in their pay increase over the last two years.

Many of our drivers have told us that they will not be striking and will come to work as normal. Nearly all our support staff have already confirmed the same to us. To make the numbers up we are bringing in volunteer staff from our sister companies and other companies.

We now have over 100 drivers available to work on Thursday. As a result we expect to run close to a full service on Thursday. All school routes WILL operate.

Apologies for the gap in blogging…it’s a busy time of year!

The Madness concert required 30 buses, hired in from us by the organisers, and the weekend was also our timetable change. We’ve had to replace most of our 1200 roadside timetable displays and have completed this over the weekend - no mean feat! Behind the scenes other back ofice staff have been busy updating ticket machines, destination displays , and moving buses between our garages.

Bestival is now less than a fortnight away, and we have been busy bringing in extra double deckers ready to move the masses. We’ve been building a closer relationship with Bestival’s organisers, and area laready looking forward to working with them for 2010. In the meantime though, we’ve got this year’s event to manage.