Following news of the partnership between Isle of Wight Council and Southern Vectis when some changes to the bus timetable were announced, Southern Vectis been in touch today to highlight further changes to their timetable which come into effect from 17 April 2011.
Route 7 between Newport, Yarmouth, Freshwater, Totland and Alum Bay will have twice as many buses, as it becomes half hourly instead of the currently hourly service.
In addition, buses will return to the Cranmore area on an hourly basis. The changes will considerably improve connections with the Wightlink ferry route between Yarmouth and Lymington, and meet requests from local residents for better services to and from Newport.
Nightbus extension
The West Wight towns will also gain an all new Friday and Saturday ‘Nightbus’ service, offering late night journeys home to the West Wight for revellers and ferry customers.
In the East Wight, Route 2 will be extended from Sandown to Ryde, increasing the daytime frequency between Sandown and Ryde to every 15 minutes.
The extension to Route 2 will also provide a half hourly daytime service to the Oakfield area of Ryde.
In the evenings Route 3 between Ryde, Sandown, Shanklin, Ventnor, Wroxall and Newport will be increased to every half hour.
Route 5 between East Cowes and Newport will also be gaining an all new Friday and Saturday ‘Nightbus’ service, offering late night journeys home from Newport.
Tanya Simms, Commercial Manager at Southern Vectis said, “We’re delighted that we’re able to offer better services to both residents and visitors from April 17. We’ve carefully reshaped our business over the past 18 months and it is in much better shape to deal with the prevailing economic and public sector funding conditions. This is borne out by our ability to provide increased services despite the external problems that face the community and the local economy.”
“While we have to be careful about investing in more services, we are continuing to monitor our network, and look for further opportunities to improve services where we can grow the level of passengers enough to make any improvements viable”.
