Over the last week it was announced that Xelabus has been awarded a number of new contracts for the school season as well as taking on sub-contracts in other parts of the South. Firstly in the shorter term contracts; Xelabus is currently running both the Queen Alexandra Hospital Staff Park and Ride and the Isle of Wight’s Island Line replacement service.
QA P&R
In the Queen Alexandra Park and Ride, staff are shuttled to and from their cars from a dedicated parking facility aloft of Portsdown Hill. This service is usually operated by First Solent’s Hilsea Depot, however due to staffing issues the service has been sub-contracted to Gareth Blair.
This runs up to every 10 minutes in the peaks, but is not a public service, so is not necessarily running to a fixed timetable.
The Island Line
While the South Western Railway continues to test it’s new class 484 trains, and Network Rail contracts continue to fix the problems on the Island, Xelabus replaces First Solent and First Bristol buses on the Isle of Wight. The contract is run by First Travel Solutions, the dedicated events and rail replacement arm of First Bus; but the buses are now provided by Xelabus (3) and Portsmouth City Coaches (2).
The rail replacement service continues despite a number of promised completion dates. There is currently no completion date, due to COVID, flooding and “technical problems” which apparently also involve replacing new bits of supporting foundation.
The shuttle buses will continue to run on an … (hang on – ed) … they are only running hourly? WOW!
Victorious!
Alongside the contract to run buses every 10 minutes between Town Quay, Southampton Central, Eastleigh and Let’s Rock last weekend, the press release between Xelabus and CBW also suggests they will be running up to 35 buses at Victorious in Portsmouth over the late summer Bank Holiday!
That is some big contract gains compared to other local operators that would benefit from the work!
Updated 24 August: Xelabus will be operating an X27 from Gunwharf Quays (Stand N) to Clarence Pier, and an X28 from Lakeside P&R to Clarence Pier for this event… if you want to go get photographs.
Schools in for September!
Xelabus are also announced to have (according to Coach & Bus Week) secured exclusive transport for Kings and Westgate Schools in Winchester, Perins School in Alresford and St Georges School in Southampton.
That would suggest that many of our other operators are pulling out for schools work. It is not clear who was providing the service for Perins; Mortons provide private services from their base north of Basingstoke, but are still advertising them.
Stagecoach South, Wheelers, Bluestar and First all have schools services with one or more of the others though. Is this a coup? Or are the bigger operators simply admitting the staff levels won’t support private school services?
Either Way….
Lot’s of new work, will probably mean lots of new buses and drivers required. With such a large void in the vacancy lists of bus operators and HGV companies at the moment, the question is when will we see the cracks?
More importantly though; will it earn enough money for Xelabus to pay a developer to remove the out-of-date service uplift announcements on their website? Although we can not complain too much as the Stagecoach South COVID page was last updated in May.
Hampshire County Council are going for single or groups of schools all having the same operator for their transport provision. Testbourne at Whitchurch was the first, won by Nick Morton’s Southern Coach Lines. Hounsdown at Totton, Henry Beaufort in Winchester and several other schools or groups of schools have now been awarded on the same basis. Eggars and Amery Hill at Alton for example have gone to Cresta Coaches. Why Xela wanted Perins in Alresford, relatively remote from their base in Eastleigh, is one of life’s mysteries!
Ahhhh. That makes sense. Mortons is still advertising their Basingstoke area to Perins, so that might suggest they are purely private run.
I do wonder if Xela are over stretching & may get unstuck if driver shortage by having to sub-sub contract work out to independent bus operators. However, flip side is Xela may be employing many p/t workers who would not be able to work in a ‘bigger standard’ bus company schedule.
It’s a question of what came first, the driver or the bus?
The passenger! LOL