Southern Vectis route 15

Southern Vectis route 15 was a bus service previously operated by Southern Vectis in the town of Ryde on the Isle of Wight. It connected the suburb of Haylands with the town centre and bus station. The route began operation on 1 October 2006, and ceased operation on 15 March 2008, when other bus routes were diverted or enhanced to maintain a bus service to these areas. The general daytime frequency of the route was every 30 minutes.

History

Route 15 was created in the Southern Vectis network change of April 2006 by renumbering the former route 34, a local service from Haylands to Ryde bus station. As well as route 15, services between Ryde, Havenstreet and Newport on route 33 also served Haylands and continue to do so under Wightbus. The service continued basically unchanged until it was withdrawn on 15 March 2008, at which point all journeys were renumbered 29 and the timetable altered slightly. A month later, on 20 April 2008, bus journeys to Haylands were transferred to route 4, which already ran through the nearby Binstead Estate.

Former Services

A half hourly service was operated in each direction during the daytime. An hourly Sunday evening service was initially run, but was later withdrawn.

Revived route

In November 2008 Southern Vectis announced that due to the amalgamation of route 15 into route 4, the increased through journey time from Ryde to East Cowes was damaging end to end traffic on route 4. As full-fare paying customers make more end-to-end trips than local journeys, this resulted in the route significantly under-performing, and there was a potential threat of a complete service cut to the Haylands and Binstead Estate area.

From 5 April 2009 route 4 was re-routed to make a through journeys faster with a replacement bus service being put in place for the affected areas of Ryde. One of Southern Vectis' coaches now runs the service half-hourly. However this service will run only between 09:15 and 13:45. From then school services run in the area from AbOUT 15:00, with Wightbus route 33 running a service through Haylands at around 17:00.

No route number was allocated to the new service, and runs separately under the Moss Motors brand. There are some differences to the route the previous service took to the new one operated by Moss Tours. The route no longer serves the bus station and now starts and finnishes at the Commodore Cinema. After serving Lake Hurron in Haylands, buses now travel to Upton Cross, then Newnham Road on Binstead Estate before terminating at the cinema.

The new service was launched on 5 April 2009 by island MP Andrew Turner. It is thought the new service would help around 2,000 people and is hoped that if more people can be encouraged to use the route, the level of service will be increased.

See also

• List of Southern Vectis bus routes
• Transportation on the Isle of Wight

External links

• Southern Vectis website - islandbuses.info
• Southern Vectis route list