It is the end of the season and Southern Vectis have joined the list of bus operators who are announcing changes to the service. These changes will take place on the weekend of Sunday 2nd October:
Breezer Hibernation
The Breezer network of services has started to go into hibernation for another winter. As a side note I have popped over myself for a few trips and found them reasonably popular and well driven. I hope they all come back again next year (they usually do!)
The Summer Links service serving Tapnell Farm Park and Carisbrook, Island Coaster morning and evening services along the English Channel, Downs Breezer on the east side of the Island and Shanklin Shuttle to the beach all finish after close of services on Saturday 1st October.
The Needles Breezer – which to me needs nerves of steel to drive (and an extended life insurance plan) – continues until the end of October, but will run hourly from Sunday 2nd October.
Minor changes Elsewhere
Many of these changes are regular as the summer timetable changes to winter. So if you are on the Isle of Wight then I am sorry, I am teaching you to suck eggs or something. What is good about the Southern Vectis timetable is that there is rarely any major upheaval. Yes, the Summer Links was renamed from the 27 this year, etc, etc; but it works, so the GoAhead Group never really needs to fix it.
Service 1 between Newport and Cowes Carvel Road (for Red Jet) has a change to one of the night bus trips.
Service 2 between Newport, Shanklin, Sandown and Ryde returns to it’s winter timetable. That means it is runs 10 minutes quicker across the hour and a half trip, and leaves Ryde 10 minutes earlier.
The slightly longer service 3 which additionally calls at Ventnor is also 10 minutes quicker. The day time buses do not have any changes to their Newport and Ryde departure times though, except on the “Night 3” on Fridays and Saturdays.
Newport to Cowes on service 4 and service 5 have some minor changes, with a few trips running a few minutes earlier than they do now. Likewise service 6 between Newport and Ventnor can take up to 2 minutes quicker!
The two ways to Yarmouth on service 7 has some early evening changes on all days of the week, with some departures leaving Newport Bus Station earlier.
In the opposite direction, some trips heading east to Ryde on service 8 run up to five minutes later in the evenings.
Non-Southern Vectis changes
Following on from the closure of the Isle of Wight’s Island Line train service last year and the delayed and sometimes fractured re-opening, there are more temporary changes on the way.
Ryde Pier is scheduled for a closure from Sunday 30th October until “Spring 2023” for the structure to have strengthening work done to it. It appears from the Network Rail press release, that there was a delay obtaining the necessary permits to do the work, which may have originally meant it was scheduled for the same time the rest of the line was closed.
Reading through the information on the press release, with multiple styles of construction and various interim repairs and replacements; it’s not necessarily a Heath Robinson style fix, but it might be a Heath Robinson style of taking it all apart first!
If I understand the Island Line service enough though, that might mean that they will only be able to run a 2 carriage class 484 service for that period of time, because of the way that the signalling and track layout is set up at Ryde Esplanade Station. It is the winter though, and the footfall during that time is lower like on the buses.
For those who are looking for some unusual movements, there will be a bus replacement service to the pier head. During last years closure of the line, this largely appeared to be a taxi shuttle, however you might find someone like XelaGroup (through their Seaview Coaches brand) might run a very small minibus.