Rock Walk; Day 01

Day one of the diversion, this is Union Street at mid afternoon. Full to the brim. Once you drive down Union Street there are a couple of turn offs but you still end up going up Abbey Rd. Abbey Road looked just like this. Part of the problem is there are no signs at the top of Union Street outside the Town Hall pointing to the diversion route over Torre Church Road, Lucius Street and Belgrave Road so motorists a little confused head for somewhere they know, Union Street. We all expected the problem to be Fleet Street, which it was up till 10 am with all the goods vehicles making deliveries. After that, apart from the old car that drove up and down (illegally) it wasn't the bottleneck we feared. The posts at the bus stops going down and the bench and posts just before the stop going up are still there and it would help if they went, as would someone with a baseball bat standing at the bottom of Fleet Street to dissuade car drivers from breaking the law by driving in Fleet Street.



The lack of a sign at the top of Union Street was one omission, an other I can not understand was the absence of cones on the Sea Front as the road approaches Belgrave Road. There are three lanes there, usually the left lane is for vehicles turning left into Belgrave Road or for going up Shedden Hill Road (which is what the buses from Paignton were doing). The centre and right hand lane were for continuing along the sea front past Rock Walk. This is now closed but traffic can drive up to the stop line at the lights in the centre and right lane. Then they notice the road is closed with barriers across and now have to get into the left lane. When I was there waiting for the lights to change a white van arrived in the right lane, noticed the barrier and when the lights went to green shot forward across in front of me and up Belgrave Road. A little gentle braking on my part avoided a RTC. A few cones courtesy of the Torbay Council would have prevented this incident. Maybe they will get round to getting some from somewhere, oh, and the sign at the top of Union Street.



The crane, the 2nd biggest in the known universe, that is hadn't arrived when I was there this morning, only workmen removing all the lamp post to give the grane room to work and erecting a fence to keep out spectators like me. Then at 17:15 while I was waiting on the Newton Road to take over a bus this BIG CRANE went by. Too dark to take a photo, Too fast as well. I get one tomorrow.



The other problem which we were expecting did happen. All down Union St and Fleet St and up Fleet St and Abbey Rd passengers were getting on any bus with 12 on the front and getting upset when we told them they were on the wrong bus. I expect they will get used to it in about 5 and a half weeks