Liverpool Tries Scrapping Bus Lanes
It is being reported on both BBC Breakfast and their web site, that Liverpool is scrapping bus lanes in a nine month experiment to see if it reduces congestion.
What Liverpool really needs is better information on how to use the buses and walk around the city, as I said here in this post. I didn’t get a reply. Unlike from Birmingham after this post.
Closer to home, I’m being seriously inconvenienced by road works in a bus lane, which has resulted in the closest stop to my house being closed. This means that when I return from the Angel with my shopping, I have to walk several hundred metres further. In a couple of cases, I’ve taken taxis home, to avoid the walk.
Hopefully, in a few days, we’ll be back to normal!
Through London In The Dark On A Bus
To start the journey back from Palermo, I needed to get to Gatwick Airport for the 06:20 easyJet flight.
I did think about checking in to a hotel at the airport, but in the end I got up early aiming to catch the 04:00 Gatwick Express to the airport.
I looked for a taxi and in the end I took a night bus from close to my house to Victoria.
It was an unusual and almost magical experience, as I sat up front at the top, on a virtually empty bus, that sped through an empty city. It ran a bit faster than the schedule.
Some of my friends advised against this method of getting to the airport, as you don’t know who you’ll meet. But I didn’t meet or even see anybody, except for the bus driver and another passenger on the bus, who took the same route to Gatwick.
If I have to get an early flight from Gatwick, I will use the same method again.
Manchester’s Metroshuttle
Manchester has a free city centre bus called the Metroshuttle.
We need more of these in city centres. The Manchester Transport Authority, TfGM, also provides other systems locally in Bolton, Stockport and Oldham. But I have only seen one other recently and that was in Huddersfield. I can remember buses of this type in Liverpool in the 1960s and later in Ipswich and Cambridge. Liverpool’s City Circle was probably a victim of the infamous bus strike of the 1960s and then it’s route was replaced by the underground railway. But Ipswich and Cambridge you either have to walk or find a bus that might go where you are going. Cambridge is particularly bad for the inexperienced visitor.
Lots Of Taxis But No Buses
I felt hungry, so I felt the best thing to do was move on towards Manchester, as there didn’t appear any good coffee or gluten-free snacks. This greeted me as I walked back to Preston station.
Lots Of Taxis But No Buses
Is this the cause of the city’s bus problems at the rail station? Moving the taxi rank to the side would allow buses to call at the station properly. But then rule one in planning traffic around railway stations and city centres is not to annoy the taxi drivers. and as I suspect many taxis are driven by ethnic minorities, rule two is not to annoy ethnic minorities.
But something must be done in Preston to make the city centre more viable. With a proper interchange at the station, it might encourage the use of buses to get to the outlying towns around the city. At present I suspect, that you have no excuse but to drive.
As a coeliac, Preston is a place, I wouldn’t put on a list of places to change trains. the only restaurant I know there, that I’d trust to do gluten-free well is Pizza Express.
The best thing about Preston was the train I took to Huyton.
Preston Bus Station
Preston Bus Station is a classic 1960s building in a brutalist style. I decided to visit, when I heard about the rows raging around the building as I discussed here.
The council has a problem in that the building needs a lot of repairs and have proposed its demolition. But there is a heritage lobby opposed to this and so the row is set to continue. The building has now been given a Grade 2 listing.
I quite liked the building and it does seem to my untutored eye that it does need a bit of work to be done.
But you can’t help but think that the building has problems that refurbishment won’t solve.
If you take the best train-bus interfaces in the country like Barnsley, Canning Town and now Kings Cross, the bus station at Preston is not in the right place for those arriving in the city by train. It’s akin to expecting passengers arriving at Kings Cross to walk to Euston to get a bus. They wouldn’t and I suspect in Preston they don’t!
So I come to the reluctant conclusion, that the bus station should be knocked down, despite the fact I like the building a lot.
The only way to save it, would be to create an innovative solution perhaps using a free bus that connects the rail and bus stations via the main shopping street.
But I suspect that has been looked at and discarded.
Incidentally, I wasn’t the only visitor interested in the bus station. There were perhaps three others photographing the building.
Buses In Preston
I arrived in Preston and found this information board and bus stop map at the station.
Bus Information In Preston
But it was a start and is so much better than you get in many places.
However, the stop I needed to use to get to the bus station is on the other side of a busy road. How’s that for joined up thinking?
The Bus Stop At Preston Station
So it had a seat and a litter bin, but the light controlled crossing was some distance away. Why wasn’t the stop for the bus to the bus station actually inside the entrance to the station? The whole station entrance road seemed to be full of taxis waiting for not many passengers in the middle of the morning
Getting on the bus was the usual palaver of taking your ticket out putting it flat on the machine and then being issued with a pointless ticket. Why do bus companies outside London not have a touch and go system that recognises free bus passes, like London does? Or even one, that allows you to show your ticket to the driver, as you do in London with a British Rail ticket with an added London Travelcard?
The bus was one of those single entry/exit types and I was the only passenger, although a lot had got out at the station.
All Alone Am I
How does a driver organise someone getting out in a wheelchair, at the same time as someone with twins in a double buggy gets in, on these outdated single door buses? It always puzzles me, that new buses as this one undoubtedly was, are still built this way!
But at least it got me to the bus station!
New Buses For London Arrive At Liverpool Street
New Buses for London are now operating out of Liverpool Street station.
What better way is there now to show children Central London, if Liverpool Street is your London terminus? You just take the escalator up to the bus station and go to stop C, where you board one on route 11. Wikipedia says this about route 11.
The bus route passes many tourist attractions such as Westminster Cathedral, Westminster Abbey, Methodist Central Hall Westminster, St Margaret’s, Westminster, Churchill War Rooms, The Cenotaph, Downing Street entrance, Banqueting House, Horse Guards Parade, Admiralty House, Trafalgar Square, Royal Courts of Justice, Prince Henry’s Room, St Dunstan-in-the-West, St Bride’s Church, St Martin, Ludgate, St Paul’s Cathedral, St Mary Aldermary, Mansion House, and Bank of England.
it will get even better when the route gets its full compliment of new buses and they finish the works at the station for Crossrail.
Will this updating of route 11, help to solve one of London’s worst cross-London transfers between Liverpool Street and Victoria, as this route goes very close to that station for journeys to the south of London? At a quieter time, I would certainly take the bus, but that is always the best way to get round Liverpool Street station’s lack of Underground lines going south!
The Hospital Test
As I travel around the country, I like to apply the hospital test to all of the places I visit.
Imagine, that a friend or relative has been taken ill or had an accident and is in the local hospital!
By going to the local main station or airport, can you get to that hospital easily using information available there?
Some hospitals are easy to do the last link, but for others, the information is sadly lacking.
I’ve just looked up Barnet Hospital, where both my in-laws died. I did find the nearest station and bus information on the web site, but it wasn’t on a front page link, as it seemed to assume most will drive. On the Transport for London web site, I did find a spider map for the buses to and from the hospital. But not in every case, will I have such good local knowledge!
Incidentally, it seems that most London hospitals have their own spider maps showing all buses around the hospital. The only one I can’t find is one for University College Hospital.
How does your local hospital stack up?
Remember a high proportion of visitors will not be in the first flush of youth and many will have mobility and eyesight problems.
Londoners Still Love The Hackney Eight
I was coming home from the Angel last night, when one of the Hackney Eight showed its distinctive shape coming from the direction of Saddlers Wells.
As it approached the stop, prospective passengers walked past the 56 that many of them, like me, could have taken and waited for a few seconds for the New Bus for London to arrive.
Why don’t Transport for London do the right thing and convert route 38 to the new buses?
But then us plebs in Hackney don’t count for much, as BT have shown by their non-delivery of fibre-optic broadband.
If the 38 went to Archway in Islington, it would have been converted by now!
Kings Cross Square Is Nearly There
Kings Cross Square opens tomorrow and it’s nearly there.
The buses though are back and I came home on a 476 towards Islington, from in front of the station. The driver seemed pleased too, judging by the smile on his face, when I said it was good to have the stop back.
The Anonymous Widower 