I am in my 23rd year of commuting across the Solent and at various times have travelled on the Red Funnel Red Jet on Hovertravel and for the past six years on the Wightlink YarmouthLymington route The Solent has always been considered an expensive stretch of water to cross and this is particularly the case in the past 4 years since the changes in ownership of the ferry companies I recently found a Wightlink 2003 Residents Fares leaflet and made the following comparisons on some of the fares 1 A foot passenger day return on the car ferry is now £1140 2003 £710 increase 606%2 A foot passenger day return on the RydePortsmouth catamaran is now £1100 2003 £710 increase 549%3 A foot passenger period return on the car ferry is now £1540 2003 £1040 increase 481% 4 The cheapest foot passenger multilink ticket is now £750 return ie £22500 for a book of 30 returns In 2003 the cheapest was £512 ie£25600 for a book of 50 returns This is a 465% increase in 6 yearsSeason tickets and car ferry tickets show similar above inflation large increases Since Macquarie purchased Wightlink they have raised fares and complicated the fares structure There are now 7 tarrifs for islanders purchasing car ferry tickets depending on time and dates of travel In 2003 there were 3 They have even recently ntoduced different car parking rates in the Lymington Terminal car park depending on whether the passenger is a season ticket holder a purchaser of multilink tickets or a oneoff traveller The recent introduction of the llarger ferries on the YarmouthLymington route highlighted Wightlinks disregard for its passengers Although they took the boats out on trials they did not practice the loading or unloading of vehicles until they commenced the service on 25th FebruaryIn the first weeks of service two hours to cross the solent was the norm on several occasions In 2003 we had 3 smaller boats running a half hourly service for all the year except January February and part of March Now we have an hourly service for most of the year which very often doesnt run on time It will be interesting to see how they will run a third ferry I expect it will turn into a shuttle service rater than one that runs to the timetableIt is evident that car ferry traffic is down partly because of the current economic climate but the ferry companies fare increases in recent years must also have been a contributory factor

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