By Isle of Wight Observer
Network Rail and South Western Railway (SWR) have said that Ryde Pierhead station and the line to Ryde Esplanade station will re-open no later than June 10, shortly before the IW Festival, which starts on June 15.
Work is now entering the final stages, with engineers reinstating 172 metres of track, replacing 280 sleepers and painting the newly-strengthened steelwork. The 143-year-old, 686-metre-long Victorian pier has been closed to Island Line services since October 2022.
SWR will doubtless be hoping that the line re-opening will lead to an upturn in fortunes for the troubled railway, which has only recently started to deliver the long-promised twice-hourly service during the day. Over the last year, more than seven per cent of Island Line services have been cancelled, (SWR average is just over one per cent), many due to staff shortages, although cancellations have fallen recently. And the latest station usage estimates, covering November 2021 to March 2022 suggest that passenger numbers for the first five months after Island Line reopened in November 2021, fell by almost 30 per cent from 2017/18.
The government’s plan is that Island Line will become a separate self-sustaining business, with much lower subsidies than previously, when they were said to be in the region of £4 million a year. The revenue at present does not cover the running costs and there is clearly some way to go before that hope can be realised.
Requests to SWR for more recent passenger numbers and to the DfT for information on the subsidies paid were unanswered.