More on Fleet St.

More on Fleet street from the Herald Express.

BUSES DRIVING US CRAZY
11:00 - 27 August 2007

The floods also once again brought home how silly it is to have a 'pedestrian priority' area where the welfare of pedestrians clearly comes last.Shopkeepers in Fleet Street were incensed that as the flood waters rose Stagecoach buses were still running up and down the road.

But how come so many are there in the first place?It's something Ann Williams raised after visiting Fleet Street.The former Torbay councillor said: "I sat in the precinct and there were buses everywhere. They were queuing up and beeping their horns. It was horrible."

Ann said she spoke to three visitors while she was in Fleet Street."They said they wouldn't be coming back to Torquay," said Ann.Stagecoach does a good job in the Bay and it obviously has to get its buses through the town and down on to the harbourside.But Fleet Street is either open to traffic or not. At the moment it's in between and that's a tragedy in the making

Lets take a few points from this short article. One the flood waters arrived in less that 3 minutes and were not Stagecoaches doing. The shops were flooded by the rising water and would have been flooded even if Stagecoach had stopped running. What was the former councillor doing about the buses using Fleet Street when she was a councillor? Answer, nothing. And three, in the nine years I have lived here and driven up and down Fleet Street several times a day and walked up and down Fleet Street several times a week I have NEVER heard a bus horn being blow. She makes a brief visit and hears them being blown all the time. She is one unlucky councillor. I have also spoken to visitors who say they are never coming back to Torquay and they give me lots of reasons, none favorable to the local councils efforts to improve Torquay for the visitor. I have also spoken to thousands of visitors who will be coming back to Torquay.

Watch the video and see if you think any of the pedestrians or in any danger from the buses. The buses are 34 feet long and take 5 second to pass a given point. That is 6.8 ft per second which is slightly over 4 mph. Stopping distance at 4 mph is 6 inches.