The saying goes that you wait for ages, then three buses turn up one behind the other.

Well it’s a fair few months now since we were last graced with an award. Some you enter yourselves for, some others enter you for. Some are bus industry ones where you have to impress your peers, others are outside the industry, where you have to make people take notice of what you do as well as how you do it.

Awards are a great way of showing our dedicated staff that their efforts are appreciated, not just by their employes, but by ‘outsiders’ too.

Choosing those to enter yourselves for is a dilemma in itself. Sometimes you do it naturally beacuse you want to support the awards themselves. Sometimes it’s difficult to see what the criteria is and how you can fit, so you don’t get round to entering!

Anyway, just like buses, we’ve waited a while, then all of a sudden recieved 3 awards in the space of 2 days.

On Thursday we found that we had been awarded the ‘Innovation Award’ in the UK ‘Green Transport Awards 2009′ for our ‘Really Green Car Scrappage Scheme’ - www.scrapmymotor.com. This is a great result, being nominated by the industry press and demonstrating that we are leading innovation nationally.

On Friday we were at the Isle of Wight Chamber of Commerce ‘Business Excellence Awards’ 2009. We’re committed members of our local Chamber of Commerce and believe that we have a duty to work for the benefit of the Island generally. Last year we won the ‘Green Business’ Award which really pleased us, but the rule is that if you win something you can’t enter it the next year. On the back of that we sponsored that award this year, and we’re please to present this years winners and runners up with their awards. For our own part we entered the ‘Business in the Community Award’, an area of our work which is also very important to us. The great news is that we won that award this year, but then went on to be awarded one of the Chamber’s special awards - ‘Chamber Member of the Year’. That was a fantastic surprise and again a great reflection on our committment to the Chamber.

I guess thoughts stretch to 2010 now - we’ve been invited to enter a couple of national and regional awards so we’ll see what we can contribute!

‘The really green car scrappage scheme’ was a really difficult initiative to predict. There was always the worry that no-one would take us up on our offer. This last week we’ve been promoting it on a big mobile hoarding in Arreton. Every time we do so we seem to get a new flurry of interest. We’ve still got our IW Radio campaign to come, and soon we plan to start using the real people and their cars who have done the deal to refresh the messages.

We’re well into double figures now, with enquiries continually coming in - we’ve done our first moped and van and a wide range of cars. We’re creating a gallery of them all to add onto the website www.scrapmymotor.com shortly.

We’re also going to create a carbon meter on the site to calculate how much CO2 the scheme and its participants are no longer emitting.

Winter’s definitely arrived – so far the only real effect has been trying to manage our routes around countless fallen trees that have temporarily blocked most of our routes over the past few days, and a busy couple of days helping Wightlink transfer their customers between different ports – at one stage on Saturday only the Fishbourne car ferry was operating. After a good Indian Summer with plenty of people out and about, it’s definitely quieter on the Island this month.

So a return to Robin Hill yesterday, home of the Bestival, was a shock to the system. Last time I’d driven out of there it was in a gloriously sunny September and the place had been buzzing. Today it was windswept and chilly, not at all hospitable or giving away any hint of that fantastic weekend just a couple of months ago.

Anyway, I’m rambling. The point of the post is that we are already deeply involved in the planning for 2010’s Bestival in ten month’s time. Transport and traffic were big issues this year, with the guys at Bestival really wanting to make the whole travel part of the experience much smoother. They did a wonderful job this year in promoting public transport, with all the environmental and traffic benefits that it brings. The event has grown so much and is so popular that the infrastructure is no longer fit for purpose, so a real priority for next year is to increase the capacity of the bus station, and to make the journey a more integral part of the Bestival experience. There are further plans afoot to encourage more people to use an improved public transport system specially designed for the event.

The main infrastructure change will be the building of a new purpose designed bus station on the edge of the site, with a new traffic management plan to be discussed with the Council.

Meanwhile we’re busy now looking at new routes and ways of getting people to the event. It may be wet and windy out there, but there’s a warmth already from working on such a fabulous event.

One of the things we’re especially passionate about is the information available to existing and potential customers about our business.

We’ve reached the point where every bus stop in our network – and there are over 1000 of them – has a named bus stop flag in our current style and an up to date timetable in a proper quality timetable case. The website receives good reviews and feedback too, and our timetable booklet is delivered door to door across the Island, as well as being available widely.

Although we’ve achieved a great deal, we’re now looking at the next stage of developing our information. To try and give us an outside view of what we can do to improve, we’ve been working closely with Bus Users UK, the national body that represents bus users. We asked them to carry out a critical audit of all our information which they have now done.

We’re also working very closely with ‘Best Impressions’, our London based design team who specialize in working for public transport operators. We’ll be using Bus Users’ UK’s thoughts and suggestion, and Best Impressions’ flair and design skills. One of Best Impressions’ special strengths is their ability to present information simply and clearly; they understand what we do and how we do it, not least because we have been working with them since we became part of the Go Ahead Group. They are the guys who designed the new ‘Southern Vectis’ brand and livery, who design all our publications, and who created our website. They have also been fully involved in all our specific campaigns, including ‘Island Thinkers’ and Scrapmymotor.

We now have a number of specific areas in which we’ll be working to improve our quality and quantity of information:

• Providing our own timetable holders and information boards in mainland ferry terminals; and in Island terminals for people arriving and in our own bus stations; and in Tourist Information Centres, wherever we can secure agreement;

• We’re already overhauling the layout and navigation on our website;

• We’re adding a new fare checker to the website, allowing the public to check any point to point fare on-line;

• We’re looking to be more focused on which tourist publications we provide information in, and in what quantity;

• In Newport Bus Station we’re planning to provide much more information throughout the whole site, and to better utilize and arrange the travel centre;

• In Ryde and Yarmouth Bus Stations we’re also looking to provide more information;

• At all 1000+ bus stops we’re going to be changing the way in which we provide the timetables information, with clearer and more detailed times, and to provide other information such as different journey options. We’ll also be providing times specific to individual bus stops, rather than just times from the last timing point.

• At the busiest bus stops we’re planning to provide more information on the shelters about the bus network and about the different fares available.

• On the buses themselves we have a plan to brand those on routes 1,4, 9 and 38, both inside and outside;

It certainly isn’t an overnight job, and one which will require a lot of planning and work behind the scenes. Some of the tasks will need to be trialed if we are going to get them right. Our aim is clear though – to provide the best possible information we can on our buses. Quite simply, if we are to attract customers, they need to be able to find out everything they need about our buses.

Like every Go-Ahead company we have our own committee charged with reducing our carbon footprint. Last year we estimate we saved about 16% in energy consumption from our buildings.

Some things are relatively straightforward housekeeping measures – one of our garages has the thermostat for the heating connected through the garage doors – if the doors are open, then the heating goes off!

Our offices are fitted with either movement sensitive or time limited light switches, automatically turning out the lights behind us.

In a big investment, our main garages at Newport have been fitted with new low energy lighting which is also movement sensitive. As people or buses pass under the lights that don’t need to stay on for safety reasons, they come on, and then go off again later.

In terms of our buses, they are mostly now fitted with GPS connected telemetric devices, which record the driving style and the performance of the vehicles. Each week the system reports back on how each vehicle compares across the fleet, and indeed how all our drivers rank against each other. This is invaluable in identifying rogue buses, and also letting us target drivers for retraining.

All our drivers have been trained in economic and sympathetic driving, and we’ve watched week by week as their driving styles become more and more sympathetic.

The latest thing we’ve done is directed at water usage rather than energy. We’ve fitted a really simple but innovative device in every one of our of our toilet cisterns. It’s called a ‘Save a Flush Bag’ and they are distributed free by Southern Water. It’s a great idea that’s made great by its simplicity. It’s very easy - you just lift the cistern lid and place it under the ballcock. It gradually expands over the next few hours, and from then on just sits there. Every time you flush the chain it reduces the amount of water that flushes by a litre.

Our estimate, using the figures provided by the people who make them, is that they will save about 220,000 litres of water a year for us!

Anyway, why the title ‘Talking Green’? The thing is that if we can save that volume of water, just by doing this, then imagine how much water just the Isle of Wight as a whole could save in a year! So we need to tell people about it – I feel a bus back coming up!!!

In the meantime, you can do your bit right now…

http://www.southernwater.co.uk/homeAndLeisure/waterEfficiency/atHome/saveaFlush.asp