Our Mystery Contributor follows up yesterday’s Phil Stockley Velvet interview...
After nine months of conflict between Go Ahead’s Bluestar & Phil Stockley’s Velvet, bus services in Eastleigh have settled down to what appears to be a stable level.
Velvet’s competitive Fair Oak Flyer was withdrawn in May, with Bluestar’s shorts on the 2 between Eastleigh and Fair Oak withdrawn just 3 weeks later. The 2 has regressed to a poorly regulated operation, with regular bunching of the six vehicles that operate the 20-minute headway that remains, albeit not helped by roadworks along its route.
The Eastleigh area saw virtually no changes at the start of the new academic year, apart from the addition of extra journeys from the town by Bluestar-operated UniLink, basically extra garage extensions of its core U1 service, which generally starts a mile from the town at Southampton Airport Parkway station.
The tendered C group of routes from Eastleigh to the affluent Chandlers Ford, Hiltingbury & Valley Park areas have from 1st November 2009 been awarded to Velvet on a contract worth £224,000 per annum, till May 2011. Velvet has been running there on a short-term contract since February, when Bluestar opted to withdraw commercially and it has to be said that this contract was vital to Velvet’s commercial well being. Without the C, Velvet would have had only its commercial service A requiring two buses and its commercial four-bus Barton Peveril College commitment. The three-bus C contract therefore gives Velvet volume, as it includes evening and Sunday services—and takes Velvet into Winchester for the first time, replacing Stagecoach on five-times-a-day Sunday service E2. Stockley has revamped the C to give better frequencies to the busiest locations on the route, while still serving all the lesser used stops at least hourly.
To many, the biggest sign of the ceasing of hostilities, however, was on the occasion of the one-day cricket international at the Rose Bowl in September. Go South Coast provide park & ride to events at this venue. Unable to staff the services themselves (Southern Vectis was striking the next day), they hired drivers from Velvet to staff GSC vehicles. That would never have happened even six months ago.
1 comments:
I believe the C contract is actually until May 2011.
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