Bus Vannin in Crisis

[Non-Believer]

7 hours ago, Passing Time said:

How about they just kick the CS into the long grass and answer honestly. After all, that’s why we voted them in…

The long grass is where far too many of these CS make their abodes. And where far too many subjects in the governance of this Island are kicked. Unseen and unaccountable. It needs cutting and to be kept that way....

[Dirty Buggane]

7 hours ago, Kopek said:

Crookall has paid the price, maybe others will be more cautious? Ministers and CS!

You are having a laugh.

[WTF]

8 hours ago, Max Power said:

I don't know all of the details of how Bus vannin operates, but normally buses will be operated for a number of years. This will be up to the point that they would be expected to begin to incur large maintenance costs and the warranty expires. They are sold on whilst there is a decent resale value still attached and that money is invested in new replacements. This is the current thinking in fleet management, overall it costs less to run the fleet and the buses retain their reliability!

i can see that in the private sector where there are tax gains to be had but with the knock down prices we sell our bus stock off for and the cost of new i doubt it works as you state.

[Max Power]

2 hours ago, WTF said:

i can see that in the private sector where there are tax gains to be had but with the knock down prices we sell our bus stock off for and the cost of new i doubt it works as you state.

Do we know that we do sell them at knock down prices though? They will have a market value which will guide the sale price. We probably benefit from substantial fleet discounts when we purchase them new too?

[Lxxx]

2 hours ago, WTF said:

i can see that in the private sector where there are tax gains to be had but with the knock down prices we sell our bus stock off for and the cost of new i doubt it works as you state.

Is there any evidence for this or are we just assuming that everything our transport department does is arse about face? Which granted past performance does lead you to believe but the truth may be somewhat different.

[Non-Believer]

2 hours ago, Lxxx said:

Is there any evidence for this or are we just assuming that everything our transport department does is arse about face? Which granted past performance does lead you to believe but the truth may be somewhat different.

Entirely personal point of view but it never ceases to amaze me the amount of stuff that's posted on MF that would seem too outlandish to be true at first glance but which duly transpires to be more than a little based on fact....

[Bandits]

An interesting FOI response on the cruise ship situation published in the Examiner today. So it looks like the DOI said it had no capacity to do the transfers and said it doubted Tours had either, but Tours IOM said that they had actually turned down work in order to be able to cover the cruise transfers, but we introduced new ‘specific’ covid rules (in the knowledge that the DOI couldn’t cover the work?) that seem to have then pissed the cruise company off so they went to spend money in Liverpool instead. We clearly didn’t want them spending money here - but not clear whether that’s because of the DOI capacity issues or because of some government covid-head making up new rules and requirements. Either way Liverpool benefits from their money. 

Edited August 9, 2022 by Bandits

[Roger Mexico]

It's worth looking at the actual FoI response (Case ID: 2535629;  Title: Non-arrival of scheduled cruise ship visits;  Date submitted: 15/07/22) and reading through some of the e-mails.  It gives you a lot of insight into how government operates.  It is not good.

[Wavey Davey]

29 minutes ago, Roger Mexico said:

It's worth looking at the actual FoI response (Case ID: 2535629;  Title: Non-arrival of scheduled cruise ship visits;  Date submitted: 15/07/22) and reading through some of the e-mails.  It gives you a lot of insight into how government operates.  It is not good.

Yes read into this what you will from the email messages: 

Lewin to his team: The local health team and our new interim director of Public Health are meeting this morning to discuss but currently there is a suggestion we may want to encourage the ship not to visit voluntarily (we no longer have legal controls on borders for covid, but we could refuse them DOI facilities as an example)

Lewin to Ministers: In conclusion, this is a blow, but a culmination of two issues being dealt with and the companies determined the level of Covid on the Island (leading to cancellations of tours), and the additional tests were not something they wished to expose their customers to.

So it looks like they got their way. In typical CS style nobody made a decision, and so we blamed the bus driver shortage on our high levels of COVID-19 and then we did just elect to piss them off just enough asking for extra tests that they went somewhere else. 

Edited August 9, 2022 by Wavey Davey

[Roger Mexico]

You get the impression that is they put as much time and effort into running things as they do into inventing excuses, then things would run a lot better. 

In fact they produce so many excuses that they all contradict each other and it looks like everything they say is a lie.

[Non-Believer]

15 minutes ago, Roger Mexico said:

everything they say is a lie.

That's all we need really...

[Bandits]

59 minutes ago, Wavey Davey said:

but we could refuse them DOI facilities as an example)

Which effectively exactly what they did while telling Tynwald something completely different in a briefing email and in the meantime a local company that said it could do the work as it had given up other work to do it was subsequently blown out. 

Edited August 9, 2022 by Bandits

[cissolt]

Two things that stood out to me;

Some tours were cancelled due to driver shortages, first time I've seen that mentioned.

Secondly, mark lewin is either very lazy when replying to emails or is barely literate.

[Wavey Davey]

1 hour ago, Roger Mexico said:

You get the impression that is they put as much time and effort into running things as they do into inventing excuses, then things would run a lot better. 

In fact they produce so many excuses that they all contradict each other and it looks like everything they say is a lie.

The trail is a nightmare to follow but luckily nobody seems to speak to anyone so the emails can be pulled together. It’s a shame you can’t link straight to the FOI website though as some of the documents are interesting. 

For instance I thought this was interesting from Rob Callister ABC,DEFG,HIJKLM, OP, QRSTU, VW,  XYZ. MHK.

Callister: Has anyone contacted the DOI, because this bus driver dispute needs to be resolved..

Its the first time I’ve heard it called a ‘dispute’ and not ‘staff shortages’ 

[Roger Mexico]

On 7/21/2022 at 3:44 PM, 0bserver said:

It seems like former Infrastructure Minister Tim Crookall MHK may have (inadvertently(?)) mislead House of Keys. 

On 14th June he told HoK that all services operated during TT fortnight - as reported in this article by Ged the Ferret

Except now a FOI request has revealed that slightly more than none were cancelled.

Request is dated 14th June 2022 and you can search it here 'Buses TT'

https://services.gov.im/freedom-of-information/search

Going back to this FoI and the fall-out from it, I've just realised that the information was already available in a Written Question reply to Watterson which had been published (again on the last possible date) on 15 July.  He asked a slightly different question:  If he will provide a breakdown of bus cancellations by route over the last ten weeks? which meant the TT cancellations are in longer-term context.  The resulting table is interesting:

So rather than TT Week having no cancellations and all the stops being pulled out to provide a full service, it was actually the worst week of the Summer on all the different routes.  With the weeks after and before as runners-up.

It also shows that the Facebook complaints are right and the South routes do suffer more cancellations, even allowing for more buses on the routes (3 an hour for the South compared to 2 each for Coast and West and a combined 3 for Inner Douglas).