In the ongoing saga of slashed school buses and children having the stress of arriving at school way too early or late after using several buses, the Isle of Wight council have now provided answers to more of News OnTheWight’s questions.
The council say they slashed the number of bus routes from 29 to 15 because there were too many excess seats.
News OnTheWight had asked how many, but they couldn’t provide an answer, so we asked what was the range of possible excess seats?
Over 600 spare seats
A spokesperson for the council told News OnTheWight,
“The maximum figure cannot be identified because it links to the size of vehicles on each route (usually either 53 seats or 76 seats).
“However, it would be accurate to say that spare seats exceeded 600 under the previous contract.”
The council were able to sell 345 privilege seats in the final year of the contract (which cost £390 each – bringing in £134,550) but they say, “there were other spare seats that went unsold”.
£1.265m per annum savings for the council
Many have been wondering how much money the changes to the contract have saved the council.
A spokesperson told News OnTheWight the value of the previous contract (designed in 2010/11) was around £2.977 million per annum.
The value of the new contract is around £1.712 million per annum, providing a saving of £1.265m per annum for the council.
The council say they will incur some additional costs, including paying for passes on the Southern Vectis network and contracting some smaller vehicles.
