We had a day of near chaos today. Everywhere I went I was running late until well after 8pm. When I went to catch the bus to work at lunch time 3 buses turned up at the same time. When I went down to the main road to take over a bus on the way to Newton it turned up 20 minutes late. One of the buses that arrived at the stop while I was waiting for my bus stopped to let passengers off, we're good like that, even when we are running really late we don't just open the doors and shout, JUMP loudly. The driver told me he was running half an hour late. All during the afternoon the radio was alive with drivers reporting how late they were and Yellow Control trying his best to manipulate buses where he could to try and get some order into the growing chaos. By the end of the afternoon Yellow (Paignton) Controller was answering the radio with, "What now. Please go away." This was worse than a rainy day in summer.
The reason, as usual, road works. We have to ongoing set at Livermead on the main (only) road between Torquay and Paignton, these are here for 10 weeks which should take us right up to Christmas. Every time a bus went through this gas pipe laying excerise it lost 10 minutes and in a day a bus may have to drive along this road 6 or 8 times so you can see why we were all down for most of the day. Add to this the 3 way traffic lights at Torbay Hospital, the council truck parked on the Strand all day putting up Christmas decorations and an other truck that arrived in the main road through Paignton in the middle of the afternoon to also put up premature decorations AND the fact that it is half term, always a busy week in any holiday town and you can begin to understand why one controller said it was the worst day he could remember. And he had been controlling for years and years.
8 comments:
It was good to see the workmen working so hard!
The queue at Paignton bus station for a Newton Abbot bound bus was stretching back near to the traffic lights!
Sounds like someone needs to have a word!
Our lads get cought up in ut every day so i rang the good old gas man and they told me it will be there for another 6 - 7 weeks !!!! oh joy and they have just dug up the road outside the college , not to bad this week bot next !!!!
The premature lights are going in Aberdeen too. Every evening starting around 1730. With that and the gas main replacements, it's not uncommon at the moment to wait 40 mins for services timetabled every 10.
Perhaps we should Twin Aberdeen with Torquay.
What is the difference between orange control and yellow control?
EM When a driver talks to Orange Control he is talking to a controller at the depot in Torquay and to Yellow control he is talking to a controller in Paignton Bus Station.
Thanks for replying!
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