Southern Vectis
| Southern Vectis Omnibus Company Ltd | |
|---|---|
| legal form | Limited Company (Ltd.) |
| founding | 1929 |
| Seat | Newcastle upon Tyne , UK |
| Number of employees | about 300 |
| Branch | Traffic Company |
| Website | www.islandbuses.info |
Southern Vectis is a transport company founded in 1929 that operates public passenger transport by bus on the Isle of Wight , UK .
history
In 1929, the Southern Railway took over the previously private company Vectis Bus Company , which had introduced bus services to the Isle of Wight in the early 1920s. The name of the company was derived from the Latin name Vectis for the Isle of Wight. The Southern Railway, which operated all the Isle of Wight railway lines, integrated the company into their transport offer. With the nationalization in 1948 as a result of the Transport Act 1947 , the British Transport Commission (BTC), in which the then Labor government brought together all British modes of transport, took control of the company. While the Southern Railway was combined with the other railway companies to form British Railways , Southern Vectis came under the roof of the Road Transport Executive like all other transport companies owned by the public sector outside London .
Under Minister of Transport Barbara Castle , the various bus companies were combined to form the National Bus Company (NBC) in 1969 , including Southern Vectis. Margaret Thatcher initiated the Transport Act 1985 in 1985 , which resulted in the deregulation of all local bus transport outside of London. In addition to the dissolution of NBC, the introduction of competition in the passenger market was a major consequence of the deregulation. Southern Vectis was acquired in 1986 through a management buyout .
The company, which until then had the de facto monopoly in bus traffic on the Isle of Wight, was exposed to various competing companies in the following years, some of which tried to gain market share by running parallel lines. Together with the privatization, Vectis had also taken over the central bus station in the island's capital Newport and denied its competitors access to this hub of the entire transport network. The competing companies then switched on the competition authority, the Office of Fair Trading (OFT). This decided in 1988 that Southern Vectis had to give other companies access to the bus station. In the following years, however, the company succeeded in pushing all newcomers out of the Isle of Wight market through aggressive tactics such as simultaneous trips. Most recently, Wightbus , which belongs to the Isle of Wight's Unitary Authority , the Isle of Wight Council , and which was mainly involved in school bus transport , gave up its independent operation in 2011. Southern Vectis, which has been part of Go-Ahead since 2005 , entered into a partnership with the Council and took over some less popular routes on the Isle of Wight in addition to the school bus services in exchange for public co-financing.
Line network
Southern Vectis has the de facto monopoly in public transport on the Isle of Wight, the island's formerly quite extensive railway network has been reduced to the short Island Line between Ryde and Shanklin since the Beeching Ax . As the island's capital, Newport is also the central hub of the line network. The main Route 1 runs between Newport and Cowes and is served every seven to eight minutes during rush hour. The other lines run much less frequently, mostly every half hour on working days, sometimes with only a few pairs of trips per day. Some of the lines that primarily serve public services with a few pairs of journeys are driven by volunteer drivers in a model comparable to the citizens' bus .
In addition, Southern Vectis offers several lines in the summer months, which are served by double-decker buses with an open upper deck and are mainly used for excursions through scenic areas of the island and to attractions. These lines are offered under the Island breezers brand . There is also an extensive school bus network, which is called Vectis blue according to the color of the vehicles used for this purpose . The company operates around 100 buses and employs around 300 people.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Companies House extract company no 241973: The Southern Vectis Omnibus Company Limited
- ↑ Southern Vectis: Who we are ( Memento of the original from September 11, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ John Preston et al .: Integrated transport policy: implications for regulation and competition. Oxford Studies in Transport History, Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2001, ISBN 978-0-7546-1370-1 , p. 236
- ↑ Timetable Route 1 (as of 2015) ( Memento of the original from June 26, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed July 20, 2015
- ↑ Island breezers ( memento of the original from June 26, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed July 20, 2015
