An Isle of Wight bus company is starting its own car scrappage scheme. Southern Vectis is offering a one-year travel pass worth £720 to people who hand in their old car, scooter, moped or van with a current MOT certificate. The full story is here.

That’s what they always say about buses but locally it’s true about bus companies as well. In the space of 7 days Southampton had two new bus companies providing services. The most heralded new comer was Greyhound with it’s Southampton to London service which commenced on 14 September. Just 1 week before Greyhound arrived Travelguest launched an express bus service, the Dorset Sprinter , between Southampton and Bournemouth.

The Dorset Sprinter introduction was low key, at least as far as I was concerned, because I’d never heard of it until I saw one whilst waiting to catch the Greyhound to London. I then did a Google on it to get the detail. Compared to a Greyhound bus the Dorset Sprinter looked more like it should be attending a vintage bus rally – it was an 18 year old Leyland Lynx. It will be interesting to see if the route is viable. The express route which at first you’d think was definitely viable, Southampton to Portsmouth, has been tried by several operators but has never run for long. Will Southampton to Bournemouth do better?

“FROM LEON DANIELS, CUSTOMER SERVICE AND COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR UK BUS FOR FIRSTGROUP PLC” is located here.

The first post was on 16 September and covers the launch of the Southampton and Portsmouth Greyhound services to London. At the moment I’m a little sceptical about the blog, is it just PR and hype for Firstgroup PLC? Or will it be a more frank, warts and all, type blog like that of Phil Stockley the Velvet Bus MD?

At the moment the only thing of which I’m sure is that Leon Daniel’s site is very pink! It made me think of every interview I’ve heard with Alex Warner, the Greyhound boss, in which he always says “…. transient market, gay and lesbian scene ….” as being the reasons for choosing Southampton, Portsmouth London routes as the first for Greyhound. If he really meant those words it should have been Brighton – London first :-)

Today we took the 09:10 Southampton to London Greyhound. First impressions were very favourable, nice looking coach, very well fitted internally with lots of leg room and a decent recline on the seat. Beats Megabus by a mile and NatEx by 1/2 mile! Driver was friendly on boarding but omitted totally to make any announcements either over the PA, or if it had failed, by simply addressing the passengers. We left Southampton on time and got to the M25 junction with the M3 in good time and then came the first surprise, we carried on up the M3 to take the A316 into London. If I’d been driving I’d have taken the M26 and M4 route at this time of day, after 10:00am. We hadn’t even got to Twickenham before we were reduced to a stop start crawl which lasted all the way to Richmond where the problem became apparent – roadworks. However, it was very apparent that these roadworks hadn’t suddenly appeared overnight, they were everywhere with large holes in the road from which cables sprouted and hundreds of cones. I can’t imagine why the driver took this route when he must have known of the roadworks. Consequently we hadn’t even reached Chiswick by the time we should have been in Victoria :-( When we finally arrived in Victoria again there were no announcements or apology for the very late arrival.

The return journey was much better, the driver greeted everyone over the PA, detailed where the emergency exits were, told us where the fire extinguishers were, asked us to use the seat belts and added that there was a toilet at the rear and generally did a very professional job getting us back to Southampton just 5 minutes late.

“The moment a bus crashed into a £35,000 sports car has been caught on camera. CCTV pictures show the single-decker vehicle pulling out before smashing into a Porsche and a bus stop. It happened at Barnes in southwest London earlier this summer. It is reported the car’s owner had left the Boxster just minutes earlier to use a cash machine and post a letter.”

Seems perfectly reasonable to me – what else do you expect if you obstruct a bus stop :-) Thanks for the link to this Jeff.

This reminded me of a posting from March 2007 in which I wrote:-

“Whilst I was thinking how good the day was my mind wandered back to something which happened over a year ago before I joined the Megabus rota. At that time I was driving local service buses in Winchester and was standing by my bus in the bus station waiting for my depature time in a couple of minutes. Winchester bus station is a one way system, buses enter then park on stands (nose to platform). The stands are both on the right and left in a herring bone pattern. When it’s time to leave you reverse off the stand and head for the exit. Back to that day – suddenly a Lamborghini came into the bus station stopping right in the middle of it! A gull wing door swung up, a guy rushed out and ran at a bus which had arrived seconds before. It transpired that the Lamborghini driver had been weaving in and out of the traffic on the Winchester one way system (low gear, lots of engine revs and noise etc) and thought he had time to cut in front of the bus. He didn’t have time and lost a door mirror. Whilst he was ranting, raving and shouting in the bus station his car continued to block buses in which should have left. He was asked by a couple of drivers to move it but he wanted to see the Managing Director of the bus station before doing so! Then I heard it – the beep ….. beep ….. beep …… beep of a reversing horn. This reversing horn was fitted to a B10 which then reversed over the Lamborghini! Lamborghini’s are very low at the front and the tail of a B10 quite high in comparison. I could get my bus out but didn’t, this was street theatre not to be missed. I did of course have to leave and it was at the point where the Lamborghini driver was being shown the big signs on the bus station wall saying that it was private property and no liability was accepted for anything.”