We’ve now registered our timetables and routes effective 20 December 2009 with the Traffic Commissioner, our regulator. We have to give 8 weeks notice of any changes.

Although passenger numbers are holding up well, the way we get paid isn’t!

These changes seek to consolidate what we run rather than destroy chuncks of the bus network.  They are essentially good housekeeping measures designed to retain as many customers as possible while cutting the amount of resources we run (and indeed the amount of CO2 we add to the environment!).

We’re going to run route 9 every 10 minutes, but by putting double deckers on it will get about 46% more seats, something customers have been asking us for.

Route 11 is going, but is replaced by the previous changes we made to route 7, and with early morning and early evening gaps filled in the timetable. Again, these are things we’ve been asked for.

Route 10 is being amalgamated with routes 8, 14 and 16. Route 8 stays as at present, but is extended via Yaverland to Bembridge, where it will join up with routes 14 and 16.
Although Brading loses its direct route to Newport and for some communities the journey is a bit longer, there are some real benefits.   Bembridge St Helens and Yaverland get 2 buses an hour to Newport instead of 1, and evening service. Nettlestone and Seaview get a direct route to Sandown and Newport.
Also, the problems we have keeping to time on difficult traffic days should be elimanated for routes 10, 14 and 16.

There are a few other changes, with very lightly or unused journeys removed, but overall we think we’ve managed to come up with a good package considering that it reduces the number of buses we run by a good few.

It’s a good time to do it as we aren’t overstaffed, and we’ll have the opportunity to iron out any real problems we find at Easter if needed.

The knock on effects mean that we’re busy sorting out some bus stop information, in a few cases getting information on bus stop flags back up to date in a comprehensive programme.

It also reequires some changes to vehicles in the fleet. It is likely that seven of our Mercedes single deckers will leave us, along with six of our smaller single deckers, with a mixture of double deckers and some coaches for schools replacing them where needed.

IW Bus Users meetings come twice a year. I can’t say I particularly look foward to them. While I quite like a good robust debate I struggle with some of the things thrown at me. It really is like facing a string of googlies while batting - and I don’t play cricket.

I’m still preplexed by the people who criticise us for running too frequent bus services - and these are bus users! Every time there are those questions that strike like lightning from somewhere above our planet - there’s a simple answer to them all, but it’s like a blinding light as I struggle to work out what the logic of the question is, trying to rationalise it rather than answer it necessarily!

Nevertheless, they are good opportunities to explain why we do and don’t do things that our customers want, so I wouldn’t want to miss them!

Anyway, the crux of this post is just how while not getting it wrong, we can clutch absolute defeat from the jaws of acceptability so easily…gentleman gets up and complains about two missing buses he hasn’t managed to encounter, just two days apart during the summer. That’s actually pretty bad luck as we are pretty good at not losing journeys.

This summer has been a nightmare with multiple roadworks across the Island, through the peak summer season. Indeed, the first one was an 11 that had got progressively later and later due to roadworks and the obligatory traffic lights until we eventually lost one journey.

The second was a 14 which had got caught as a previous 16 in the fabulous ‘ride out’ by 8000 scooters on Bank Holiday Sunday. The scooters looked fantastic, but had taken nearly half an hour to pass through various roads, including most of route 16 and the whole of Ryde Esplanade. All traffic was frozen as they passed, myslef included in the car on my way to Sunday lunch!

Both were entirely outside of our control and easily explained. I will say that I don’t think the gentleman would agree with that, but i’m satisfied that they were reasonable reasons - our buses cannot avoid road traffic and delays, and despite all the problems it causes for our customers, that is a pretty obvious fact.

So where did we go wrong…well, instead of getting our facts right when he contacted us first time, we bull****** him at least twice with reasons that were wrong! Why, why, why! All we had to do was to check properly and tell him!

Today we’ve had our design agency with us. We’ve got two projects in hand with them. The first is to review and replace all our timetable and associated information at each and every bus stop across the Island.  It’s a real challenge to get the content and presentation spot on. We’re working with Bus Users UK to develop the ultimate information for customers in terms of the requirements, and the design agency are working to turn that into top quality crisp information.  It’s a significant project for us - we’ll need to undertake a lot of work behind the scenes, creating databases to provide the information for each of our 1000ish bus stops across the Island. One principle will be to provide times pretty much specific to each stop, rather than ones from relatively wide timing points as at present.  We’re planning to spend some time trying that process for route 1, then rolling it out on that route as a trial.

It’s a week since we launched our ‘really green car scrappage scheme’. The principle is that if you bring us your car we’ll swap it for up to a years free bus travel.

It sounds too good to be true, but there are good reasons for the scheme:

The requirement that the car is MOT’d and that the bus pass has to be for the registered owner of the car means that we are only exchanging the passes with people who currently drive a car.

We’re getting them onto our buses, on the basis that they will probably stay after a year.

We also get cheap cars out of the local used car market, and we are making a real reduction in the Island’s carbon footprint.

Having exchanged the car, we intend to keep in touch with the participants. We can learn much about how car drivers find our buses, helping to make them more attractive to further car drivers. We can also provide incentives to then keep them on our buses after their first year.

In all honesty, getting people talking about using buses instead of cars, and considering the comparative prices of bus and car is good in itself. The PR has been superb.

Attracting car drivers to switch to buses is the ‘holy grail’ for bus companies. Understanding how we can make our services more attractive to car drivers is critical to carrying on increasing our customer numbers.

So how are we doing…

We weren’t expecting too much take-up, and were expecting that any take-up would be from second car owners and young people.

In reality we’ve been very pleased with the take-up. Within a week we’ve signed up four participants already, taken two cars with two more coming in next week. We’ve got four more valuations to conduct next week for people, and still have enquiries coming in. They aren’t all second cars either. We’re happy enough to widen our marketing of the scheme over the next few weeks.

If you’ve got a car bike or van sat on the drive that you can’t really afford to keep running or replace, or if you just want to go green, here’s something to think about…

www.scrapmymotor.com