Island Line trains will be suspended for a period of 10 hours on Wednesday due to staff sickness.
South Western Railway has confirmed that no trains will be operating between Ryde and Shanklin from 09:00 until 19:00 tomorrow.
A rail replacement bus service will be running between Ryde Esplanade and Shanklin instead, with a minibus shuttle service going between Ryde Esplanade and Ryde Pier Head.
The railway, which recently had a £26million investment to secure its future, has been plagued by staffing issues since it returned to operations in November 2021.
A new train driver is currently being sought with a salary advertised at more than £40,000 a year.
Posters here often suggest making the entire railroad into another relief road which will be needed as Ryde is built to ruination.
I am beginning to agree or alternatively make the track into an electric battery powered shuttle bus service whereby only one staff member is needed to operate both keeping staff costs down and avoiding the huge cost of track maintenance, thus cheaper fares
Reliability is the keystone of any transportation system.
With increasing electricity prices, higher wages for workers to maintain the track, and keep miles of fencing secure to prevent people and livestock from being electrocuted then perhaps it is time now, with a deep recession coming to close the railway, and use it as other closed tracks are used for, cycling, horse riding, walkers and electric bikes, etc
Otherwise fares will rise to cover the above, yet the service now is either understaffed or H&S has become such a mill-stone that it will be economically unviable come the deep recession for the next decade imo.
I will be happy to take that job, just contact IE so they can inform me of an interview, one week training is all I require, it can’t be difficult to push a lever to go forward and apply a brake to stop…
£40 grand will do nicely, and no idiot union would get me to go on strike…
Totally agree. Do it with one eye shut. Not like its going anywhere.
Just out interest, what do you do for a living? It can’t be that difficult…
Mainland train drivers earn between £55000-£85000, so why would any qualified driver want to take a massive pay cut to drive on the island? You clearly know amazingly little about train driving.
The Island Line never used to have these staffing problems, so what’s changed?
People can’t help getting sick occasionally but it seems a fairly regular occurrence now. Have they lost a member of staff who would normally cover for sickness or are more people phoning in sick than used to?
There does, unfortunately, seem to have been a sea-change in people’s general attitude to work since the lockdowns. Might just be a coincidence but giving millions of people several months off work fully paid has tended to change our work ethic I think. But a nice opportunity for someone to earn a £40k salary here for a fairly undemanding job.
Could be people retiring, failing their medicals, failing their regular competency assessments, sickness, family problems etc…
It takes over a year to train to be a train driver, £100k approx cost to the TOC and hundreds in licencing costs. It’s highly expensive and almost impossible to cover for short notice staff unavailability. Same as other rail ops, airlines, maritime etc…
In a small team of 30, it won’t take many people to become unavailable to effectively shut the railway.
What sickness??? Idleitis as my mum used say.
Island Line are no different to any other organisation or business. They suffer the same problems that can’t be foreseen or planned for such as staff sickness. Most positions are lone roles and that obviously hits harder when sickness unexpectedly happens.
They are a small team and no company will pay for a ‘spare’ employee to sit and wait for someone that might go sick in each role.
Sadly due to the nature of the business, it has a huge knock-on effect to customers. Its easy to shout the odds but what is the realistic solution to this problem in ANY business?
I think it’s terrible.
Psychic sickness,so they know there be sick tomorrow? What about today are they running?
Yes they are.
It will be shift work. If the member of staff thats due on in a couple of days knows they will be off sick, it won’t stop the service until they are due on will it.
Because they know who will be on what shifts tomorrow. Who will be on annual leave, who is still off sick, who is on a rest day and who will be out of hours to book on.
we can only go on what we are told….who knows what the real truth is…the staff can only do what they are told to..the staff dont rule the railway ..management do
Island Line promised a 30 minute service each way – which is why the loop at Brading was made.
I think that the 30 minute service lasted a couple of hours before IL realised that running a sensible service was beyond them and that Islanders only merited an hourly service – yet this is still beyond them.
Noticeable that the IOWSR can operate a service every forty minutes between Smallbrook and Woottton, so IL should be kicked off the Island and IOWSR asked to operate the Ryde-Shanklin line with the nice new stock – most of which is doing nothing.
Island Line, Wightlink, Red Funnel – failing the IOW failing the customers
It’s day one of the Diamond League athletics meeting from Zurich. They want to watch that. At least they’re honest. And at least we now know that the Isle of Wight has one railway, and you can’t even run that.
Par for the course, bit like the chain ferry, another waste of millions.
Island line is pathetic they’re not capable of running a p*** up in a brewery let alone a train service! Get havenstreet steam railway to run it they couldn’t do any worse.