Talk:Wightbus

Relationship with Isle of Wight Council

The article currently says:

The name 'Wightbus' is the trading name of the Isle of Wight Council's own bus fleet, and is a relatively recent term. ... The current name seems to reduce the perceived connection between the Council and the company. Exactly how closely tied the two remain is sometimes unclear.

The first and second sentences above are somewhat conflicting, with the first saying Wightbus is a trading name, and the second implying it is a company. I can see no evidence of a company from Wighbus's web pages, and the fact that these are not on its own web site but instead on the IoWC's web site also suggests that it isn't.

Of course if Wightbus is indeed simply a department of the council, the third sentence is a category error, as Wightbus and IoWC are just different views of the same body corporate. There aren't two to be tied.

The basic problem is that this paragraph is uncited, so I cannot be sure what other information it was based on. I shall add cite needed in the hope this flushes something out. -- chris_j_wood (talk) 13:41, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

The thing is, they are contradictory themselves. They are a division of the council, but deliberately keep themselves at arm's length to avoid influencing decisions etc (and I don't think councils are allowed to do otherwise). But then, they turn round and just pick up the mess left by SV and say the council are stepping in to save it (without putting it out to tender), so Wightbus appears to be very close to the council. Arriva436^{talk/contribs} 21:26, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

It's something I've always been quite confused by to be honest. It is regularly referred to as "the Council's Wightbus fleet", and if you look at the Council's budget for this year [1] it shows an increase in Wightbus fares by 6.7% to help solve the Council's budget deficit, which would all imply a close relationship between the two.

However, I caught a Wightbus to school up until Summer last year and, while I know it won't be considered a reliable source, our bus driver often seemed to distance Wightbus from the Council. Also, notably in 2008 [2], the Isle of Wight Council appeared to tender some school services to both Southern Vectis and Wightbus, running exactly the same routes. This situation confused me even more so, as I find it hard to believe SV would be running empty buses on school services which they wouldn't make money from anyway (especially as at the time, the IOW Council had reduced the subsidy payment to them for free travel which then resulted in fare rises and service cuts) but in the IWCP article, the Council strongly deny contracting out the services to Southern Vectis. I'm not sure if anyone else can make any sense out of it but this would also imply a distancing relationship between the two.

Overall, Arriva436's view seems to make the most sense, that they are a part of the Council, just not so much in name and deliberately distance themselves to a certain extent. Editor5807^speak 09:02, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

Not sure if this helps, but I was the one who wrote this para. I was trying to convey how officially Wightbus is a division of IWC, but publicly they distance themselves. It was a bit of a fudge but (at least at the time) seemed better than not mentioning it at all. It was a fairly early edit of mine, and I hadn't quite got the whole WP:Verify thing sorted in my mind yet. Whether we can find a third-party source that raises the issue of this confusion is another matter. --Peeky44 _{What's on your mind?} 22:54, 21 April 2010 (UTC)