Sunday 21 November 2010

Fleet Street Closed To Buses

Santa came to town today and Fleet Street was closed to all traffic, including buses. A little demonstration for anyone who thinks buses should be banned from Fleet St. Chaos reigned in case you are wondering, but only on the buses. The rest of the town was going to be closed later for the procession to celebrate the switching on of the Christmas lights. Sorry there aren't any pictures here of the lights but I have seen most of then before. Anyway there are 4 bus stops in Fleet Street, each one had a notice explaining the problem and the solution, i.e. where to catch a bus from. Now these notices were placed over the timetable Stagecoach conveniently place on their bus stops but the difficulty here is that regular bus users don't look at timetables, they know when the buses are due and there for might not notice the notice. To this end Stagecoach had someone on duty to watch for people waiting uselessly at the stops.



As soon as someone appeared to be waiting she, the young lady who was on duty when I was down there would go and explain the situation. I noticed that on some occasions the people waiting took a little persuading, "Are you sure? I always catch the bus here."

Anyway I didn't wait for the main parade, just the Mass March of the Santas in aid of "Torbay Hospital League of Friends." It was headed by the most unlikely Fairy Godmother I have ever seen.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Looks like you need some bright yellow "Bus stop not in use" covers to put over the top of the bus stop flag, like they have where I live*. Doesn't help the totally-oblivious to-everything people, but it does make it more visible.

Well, only the posh bus stops. The older ones just have bin bags tied over the top when they are closed!!

David said...

Normally Stagecoch use black bin bags, see the bus stop outside the Princess Theatre. But that has been a long term bus stop closure, nearly 3 years now. For short term notices are used.