I WAS pleased to see Wightlink has reinstated the Ryde/Portsmouth Fastcat service following Lockdown 2 and quite frankly could never understand why it was suspended in the first place, as there were many commuters who still needed to travel using this service.

But I am extremely disappointed at the restricted timetable, which is quite ridiculous and is no use to me and a great many other commuters who use this service.

Wightlink needs to at least run a FastCat from Ryde at 6.47am and a return trip at 5.15pm from Portsmouth so that the majority of commuters can catch these services.

These are the main commuter runs and this is when most of the commuters travel. Without them I and many other commuters will be forced to continue to use the car ferry — with all the issues this creates — parking at Fishbourne, early start, late finish and time taken.

I could perhaps just about understand why the FastCat was suspended during the first lockdown when very few people were travelling but this was not the case for the second lockdown where many more travelled.

In the first week of the second lockdown more than 80 people travelled on these two services – I know I counted them — and more than 30 people are now travelling as passengers on the 6am and the 5pm car ferry.

I would have thought the best way to protect their service was at least to run the FastCat when it is most required by their loyal commuters as opposed to just catering for those few who want to travel to Gunwharf and other places for shopping.

What happened to Wightlink’s loyalty to those who travel on their service day in day out, or, as the majority are season ticket holders and they already have our season ticket money, do you really not care about us at all.

I hope Wightlink will reconsider these arrangements and run the earlier and later FastCat so that I and others will not be forced to continue to use the car ferry with all the inconvenience and extra time that that involves or travel by hovercraft, which is unreliable and leaves you stranded in Southsea and forced to take an overcrowded, time-consuming bus trip to the harbour station, where most commuters need to get to.

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