In an effort to improve the centre of Torquay the Town Hall recently carried out a lot of work in Union Street. Union Street is the main road through the centre of Torquay and is the main shopping area. If you come to Torquay on holiday and want to shop don't go up to the Willows, get a 12 to Castle Circus and walk down Union Street and Fleet Walk and on to the Strand. You will now be on the Harbour and you will have past almost all the shops in Torquay.
One of the problems was that the pavements were too narrow. So the pavements were widened. This meant that to road is now narrower than it was and there is not enough room for parking on both sides. Now there are parking and unloading restrictions at all times on the right hand side of the road ( could some one tell the driver of the black car parked on the right, NCP Parking Attendants carn't be every where). Parking bays for the disabled and for unloading were established on the left in part of what was once a taxi rank. So the taxi rank which once held 15 taxis now only holds 10. And this is the most lucrative rank in town, all those shoppers exhausted after all that shopping aren't going to catch a bus.
So you're a cab driver (been there, done that, got the T shirt), you drive in to Union Street and the rank is full. It wont be in a couple of minutes, you could drive round the block but it takes 10 minutes to drive round the block in this town and when you get back more cabs will have arrived and the rank will be full again. What would you do? I know; exactly what these 3 cabs in front of me have done. Park on the bus stop. How soon before it isn't three cabs but ten and the bus stop will be an extension of the cab rank and we will have to stop in the middle of the road temporarily bringing Torquay to a dead stop?
By the way the green bit in the road is a cycle lane, you would have to be both very brave and very, very insane to ride a bike down that cycle lane. Buses pulling out, cab drivers opening doors, pedestrians stepping out and buses swerving to avoid pedestrians who step off the right hand pavement without looking are the main hazards to watch out for.
Still it all looks very nice and I am sure it is very PC.
1 comment:
Yup, that would be a cycle lane... I particularly like the nice habit people have of using them as an extention of the parking bay as well... Ooops I didn't quite manage to fit my car into this nice wide parking bay but never mind - I'm only obstructing a cycle way and making all the university students who are coming down the hill swerve suddenly into the flow of traffic as I'm parked in such a way that it's not quite possible to tell that I'm blocking their route. Er... Rant over.
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