M is for Isle of Man Transport (Part 6: Flex DRT)

Thursday 22nd June 2023

We’ve reached the penultimate daily blog reviewing Isle of Man Transport’s operations and I couldn’t finish this series without referring to Bus Vannin’s dalliance with Demand Responsive Transport (DRT).

It operates using a Flex branding and provides connections from communities in the far north of the Island to the bus station at Ramsey for bus routes 3 and 5 south to Douglas and Peel respectively as well as the nearby Manx Electric Railway.

What attracted me to give Flex a try with high expectations was seeing the timetable (yes, a DRT timetable) in the Isle of Man Transport book which showed what had previously been a traditional fixed route numbered 20/20A between Ramsey and Jurby had been replaced by Flex, but crucially has retained peak hour fixed timetabled journeys with some fixed timing points on off peak journeys so passengers are guided to scheduled departures thus removing the lottery of trying to book a journey in competition with other passengers.

This has been the tried and tested arrangement used by the ‘Connect 2 Wiltshire’ branded routes 101/102/103 between Pewsey and Devizes (formerly known as the Wiltshire Wigglybus) as well as the Compass Bus operated route 99 between Chichester and Petworth both of which I’ve blogged about and commented on their success.

Combing a degree of flexible routing alongside fixed timing points has become a proven and successful way of operation on these routes (although this isn’t stopping misguided consultants recommending West Sussex County Council change to a completely flexible DRT operation for the 99, but that’s another story). So it’s good to see Bus Vannin join this elite band of operations doing just that. Aspects of the successful Call Connect in Lincolnshire also use this fixed/flexible system of working too.

As you can see from the route 18K/19C/20/20A/Flex timetable above, there are fixed departures from Ramsey in the off peak at 09:00, 11:00 and 14:30 and Jurby 25 and 30 minutes later for the return journey with the code CV confirming pre-bookings from villages are also accepted. The same applies in the afternoon after the school journeys with Flex departures from Ramsey at 16:00 (NSch) and 17:05 (Sch) as well as a completely flexible journey at 18:40.

There’s a large print departure listing explaining the same arrangements on the wall outside the bus station in Ramsey.

I learnt that there are four Mercedes Sprinter minibuses allocated to Flex which seemed quite a generous allocation for a relatively small geographic area. I thought I’d give the app and booking system a try by booking a journey from Ramsey to Jurby at 11:00 – one of the fixed departures – to see what would happen.

It gave me a confirmed booking for an 11:00 departure and I assumed I’d be allocated to the fixed time bus. I watched the bus tracking on the app and saw it come into the bus station at 10:40 and I guessed it was ready for the 11:00 departure.

The driver popped into the office and then came out again and was obviously waiting for a passenger. I nearly went over but just as I was going to do so a woman appeared and the driver called out in a friendly manner “where’ve you been?” and had a joke with her as she climbed aboard…

… and he helped with her shopping trolley and off he went.

As 11:00 approached I checked the app again and it showed that bus was still 11 minutes away …

… but then another minibus appeared in the bus station with Jurby on the destination blind…

… and four passengers who’d been waiting walked over to board and I realised this must be the fixed time 11:00 departure…

… so I also wandered over and showed the app to the driver showing my bus as being 11 minutes away. He said he couldn’t understand why it hadn’t booked me with him and suggested I come along to Jurby on his bus. Which I did.

The buses are kitted out in the same bright red moquette as the rest of the single and double deck fleet which was a bit over powering in a minibus.

As we headed towards Jurby a woman got up to get off …

… at a narrow lane leading to her allotment …

… which I don’t think would have been served by the old fixed route 20, demonstrating the benefit of the flexible routing which hadn’t cost us a time penalty as when we arrived at Jurby there was sufficient layover time before the fixed departure time back to Ramsey.

After a few minutes stand time at Jurby and having picked up seven passengers we headed back to Douglas and picked up another couple of passengers who hadn’t booked and were obviously aware of the time to expect the bus pass by.

There was a radio call to the driver from a controller asking about a passenger who had booked but allegedly we hadn’t picked up but if anything we were sightly behind schedule rather than being early and it did strike me that with my own booking experience the interface between the scheduled fixed timetable journeys and pre-booking wasn’t running as smoothly as it could. Maybe a tweak in the algorithm is needed?

This hybrid model allows passengers who can’t be faffing around with apps to travel on the fixed timetabled journeys and those that want some flexibility to book journeys at other times.

It’s certainly an interesting approach and one I’m pleased to see being tried out. Maybe this could just be the future for DRT type services – although four minibuses does seem a lot of cost to absorb for a low populated area.

Tomorrow we round off this week’s special daily blogging about Isle of Man Transport with a visit to Laxey.

Roger French

Blogging timetable: 06:00 TThS and tomorrow’s F special.