Wight Portal For The Isle of Wight Community

Southern Vectis are always under fire for one reason or another. Mostly for their extortionate fares, but just recently for their planned cut backs.

Apparently there's going to be a big shake up on routes and frequency of buses on those routes, add that to them closing down their Ryde depot, leading to job losses, and one wonders if we are looking at a company in trouble.

They have a large fleet of vehicles and according to a report by Marc Morgan Huws, Mr. Southern Vectis himself, in the County Press, 20 more are going to be added soon.

The overheads for this fleet alone, fuel, repairs, road fund licences, insurance and so on must be enormous. Add to that the cost of employing drivers, mechanics, cleaners, admin staff and anyone else I've forgotten and it's no wonder the fares are high.

Quoted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Southern_Vectis

The Southern Vectis Omnibus Co. was formed in 1929 when the Southern Railway united with Vectis Bus Company to form the Southern Vectis Omnibus Co. Prior to this, the Vectis Bus Company ran single deck buses in a circular route from Newport, Shanklin, Sandown, Ryde, then back to Newport. Since its formation, Southern Vectis has usually stayed in the ownership of large national concerns and after 1970 was a part of the state-owned National Bus Company. In 1986 with privatisation the bus company was bought by its management team and has stayed independent until 2005, when it was bought by the Go-Ahead Group bus and rail company along with Solent Blue Line. Since late 2005, the company has had the same directors as Solent Blue Line, and Go-Ahead's Wilts & Dorset operations, as part of the Go South Coast division.

The car on the Island in 1929 was practically non existent, the Island also had a rail network and so public transport was the only way to travel around unless you enjoyed walking or cycling.
By the '50's and more so the '60's this all changed.

Whereas once the car was limited to the well off in society, post war living made it possible for the working class to own one. This happened to such an extent here on the Island that good old Beeching closed what was left of the train network apart from the little bit we still have that is.

To digress a second, there's a great quote by Michael Caine from a biopic documentary where he says.
“The reason the roads in this country are so narrow is because them in charge thought that the working class would never be able to afford a car.”

In 1930 the Island was inundated with independent bus operators. The Colson Brothers were based at the end of my road here in Carisbrooke and not far away in Gunville a Mr. King ran a service. Both these and many other of the independents sold out to the mighty Southern Vectis, who eventually became the main provider of bus services all over the Island.

Once the trains had gone Southern Vectis had to take up the slack and now that the land that the rail system was on has been developed with housing their routes have had to get longer to cover as many areas as possible with a single bus.

I don't claim to be a whiz at business, but common sense tells me that if, and I dare say this is the case, your overheads, such as those mentioned earlier, are such that they compromise both the cost  and quality of the service you provide, then it's time for a serious re-think.

There's a formulae that switched on business owners use to evaluate their businesses. It's called the 80:20 Rule. It basically measures the imbalance in a given situation.
In the case of Southern Vectis I surmise 80% of their profit comes from only 20% of the bus routes they cover in their service. If this was found to be true, remember this is a guess, I would concentrate on the 20% and sale off the 80% thus increasing profits by cutting overheads and then being able to increase profits further by cutting fare prices leading to more use of the service.

A lot of the national chains or big concerns that own business divisions on the Island, do so knowing that they will lose money. It's more of an ego thing and a handy tax loss for the parent company. This strategy is nothing new but must be kept in check or else it can lead to financial ruin for the whole group.

Southern Vectis will struggle on no doubt as they are and unfortunately we as users will have to grin and bare it.