A £50,000 review on Cowes' Floating Bridge to be carried out
The council says that the review will specifically address the last two remaining issues affecting the service's efficiency.
A new review of the troubled Floating Bridge service on the Isle of Wight is underway, incurring a cost of nearly £50,000.
This review will specifically address the last two remaining issues affecting the service's efficiency.
Carried out over a span of six months, starting earlier this year, the review is being overseen by 3S Services and is financially supported by the council, with a budget of £47,520. A comprehensive report, outlining the discoveries and recommendations, is anticipated to be finalised by December.
The two remaining issues, the council says, is the failure to operate in all tides while maintaining the necessary chain clearance and the speed of loading and unloading the vessel while needing to keep vehicles, foot passengers and cyclists separate.
It also aims to identify if it is possible to improve the queuing, paying, loading and unloading processes, with the hope of increasing the number of crossings per hour.
The Isle of Wight Council says the Floating Bridge ‘continues to provide a reliable service’ with recent figures from the authority showing it carried out 100 per cent of its scheduled hours in March and April, but averaging at 97.1 per cent of those hours between April, May and June.
In July, a software issue saw the Floating Bridge 6 out of action for just over four weeks, including over Cowes Week.
Due to the nature of the fault, the vessel had to be inspected by the Maritime and Coastguard Agency before it could go back into service.
The council said it used the downtime to carry out maintenance works to prevent issues in the future