Thursday: Election Fever

Elections are always held on a Thursday of course, and today I won two that I didn't even know I'd entered!

I don't think it's a secret that there are moves afoot to create a "South Hampshire Bus Operators Association", to provide an effective lobbying voice for the bus industry as a whole in the region. This is particularly important as Transport for South Hampshire, the emerging successor to the local authority consortium Solent Transport, should have a very strong strategic role in determining the future shape of the transport infrastructure in the region, and needs effective input from the bus industry to ensure that our interests and contribution is not overlooked.

The Bus Operators' Association has a Board which will include one representative for all the small operators in the region, and it turns out that's me - by the unanimous vote of all the small operators present at the meeting!

By the same token, George Fair of Uni-link has done an excellent job of representing small operators' interests on the Solent Travelcard Management Committee since its inception, but now that the Uni-link operation is to be swallowed up by the Go-Ahead Group, they won't be a small operator any more so a new representative is needed. Once again, it turns out that's me!

May I take this opportunity to thank my parents, my brother, Taz's pet cat, my election agent (if only I knew who it was).....

Actually Taz's pet cat, Tommy, might start to feature a little more regularly on here from now on, because having my offered my flat as temporary cattery when Taz and his family go on holiday in a week's time, I now find I've won that contest as well and I will therefore have a pet cat from Wednesday 23rd for a week!

In the real world of buses and passengers and roadworks and traffic lights, the lights that have been appearing on and off at Haskins for the last week or so are on this afternoon, and causing big traffic delays.

So once again we can't keep three DAFs out, because delays to inbound journeys mean that V384 eventually has to go out on the 1350 to keep the service running on time (which once again we did, with 100% compliance from Eastleigh Bus Station despite the hold-ups), so the late-running 1335 arrival becomes the 1420 departure, and the similarly late-running 1405 arrival becomes the 1450 departure. By this time the lights have gone and the traffic calms down, so when V14 comes in 20 minutes late at 1455 it becomes spare for the rest of the afternoon, as V384 is well in time for the 1520 and Maria can simply keep going in that.

Thanks to Mikey's hard work in the office, we make a successful end to the day as we finally manage to get the service 8 route map up on the website!