Loads of Cars In Fleet St

What are all these cars doing driving down Fleet St? Have they all decided to play follow my leader, are they all lost? Well no, there was what the police call "an incident" on Friday evening involving two young men and one knife and Abbey Rd in front of the Central Cinema was closed while the forensic department did an inch by inch search of the area. When I was in Abbey Rd it was taped shut, no one could go through, not even pedestrians. A little sweet, frail old lady wanted to go down to the Post Office Roundabout but even she had to walk 200 yds back up the hill, moderately steep to you and me but a mountain to her.

Sometimes I think the police go a little over the top when roads get closed for long periods of time. I know they have to collect evidence and all that but not letting people walk through a road that had been closed for 15 hours by then seemed a bit mean.
Anyway the traffic moved down Fleet Street with out too much of a problem, mostly because there were no buses coming up Fleet Street, they all had to divert up Belgrave Rd.
There are plans coming out soon for the redevelopment of Fleet Street. They should be interesting. One idea to reduce congestion caused by buses getting stuck at the north bound bus stop as they do now would be to do away with this bus stop completely, it isn't that far a walk to Cary Parade and it is down hill all the way. Soon as the plans are out I will have a look at them and of course pick them to pieces.

Back Home

After a few days up in Manchester I am back in Torquay, today, my first full day home and what does it do? I spends all day drizzling. I didn't go out the front door once. Instead I spent the day look at jobseeker sites and touching up, sorry, meant to say updating my CV just in case there was a job that caught my fancy. There is something there but until I get a response either way I'm saying nothing.

Something that came up in the local Torquay paper yet again was a call to ban buses from Fleet Street. I used to be dead against that idea back in the good old days when I drove a bus several times a day up and down Fleet St. Now I no longer drive a bus in Fleet St, either up or down I still thing the idea is crazy. It would be nice if there were no buses, just pedestrians but there simply isn't anywhere else to go so please stop suggesting the idea unless you have several million to donate towards the building of an underpass between the Post Office Roundabout and the Harbour.

Mind you, if a bus did this then it will strengthen the case for getting shut of the buses.

PS. Did a bus do this anyone know?

Rugby

While I was away the Under 11s rugby team, supported by Stagecoach Devon played 4 games won 3 and drew one. last Sunday they beat Totnes by 52 pts to nil but I didn't get home until 2 hours after the match had ended. The boys didn't have a particularly good start to the season losing several games in a row but all the hard work they and the coaching staff have put in seems to be paying off. They have a home game on Sunday against Newton Abbot. I will be there but so will strong winds and blustery showers. Welcome back to winter sports in the UK.
Meanwhile here in Torquay more shops have closed down including the Pound Shop in Union Square. If you have any spare cash please come to Torquay and spend it. Now. Please, before the whole place shuts down.



Scaffolding has gone up in Fleet Street so much needed work can be done on the shop fronts there. Last year a lump of concrete came loose and fell into the street. The Romans built concrete structures and some of them are still standing 2000 years later. How come modern builders can't manage to make their concrete last as long. In Burnie ( 4th largest town in Tasmania) there is a concrete building there that is dropping bits of it's self on passers by so this problem isn't confined to the UK. And when you consider the number of concrete building dotted around our town centres I watch your head if I were you.

Burnie, the main car park.

Fleet Street

This is the Post Office Roundabout. Actually it's no longer a roundabout, it's a taxi rank, and the Post Office has been moved somewhere else but it is still called, in the time honoured fashion of not renaming places without good reason, the Post Office Roundabout. It is at the top end of Fleet Street which is commonly called Fleet Walk. Fleet Walk is actually a first floor level walkway full of shops and is further down Fleet Street and is completely free of motorised traffic. Fleet Street is a pedestrianised street but isn't, as you can see, completely free of motorised traffic.
As it is pedestrianised, pedestrians have priority. That means you can't run them over if they get in the way. Even though it is pedestrianised it is still open to some motor vehicles, not just buses, and the local speed limit of 30 mph still applies. Stagecoach buses have a sensible, company imposed speed limit of ten mph, I am not sure what speeds other bus companies limit their drivers to but I used to think it would be the same.

Then yesterday I came out of the Tesco Metro you can see on the left just on the roundabout and looked to see if anything was coming. There was, a bus (not Stagecoach) some way back on the roundabout and I decided to cross as there was plenty of time. Well if the driver had been doing ten mph on the roundabout he wasn't by the time he got into Fleet Street. Probably double. I didn't have to jump for my life, just walk a lot faster, which at my age can be a bit of a strain. So much for pedestrian priority.

Parking In Fleet St.

Fleet Street, Torquay is a pedestrianised street with access for authorised vehicles from either end, goods vehicles may enter to load and unload before 10:00 am and only from the top end. Goods vehicles are not allowed to enter from the Harbour end or load/ unload after 10 am with the excepting of Tesco's who may load after 6 pm. OK so far. Buses in service are on the list of authorised vehicles. I am not going into the list of other authorised vehilces nor am I going to make a list of all the vehicles that do use Fleet St that are not authorised. I am however going to make a list of all the unauthorised vehicles I have seen being approached by the police in Fleet St in the last 10 years. Some of the details on this list may be a little hazy, time removes the fine detail from the memory after 8 years. But as best I remember it here goes. A car drove into Fleet St and stopped at a Hole In The Wall machine, passenger got out and went to the machine, policeperson stopped and spoke to driver, passenger got back in car, car drove off. That's it. In eight years.

Anyway here is a photo of a van taken in Fleet St today after 10 am and facing up the street so it entered from the Harbour end. It also blocked the road for a couple of minutes. The driver was aware he was blocking the road but did he give a ****? What do you think?

Fleet Street

Take a walk down Fleet Street any day of the week and things like this happen. It's 11 am so the van should not even be there. OK, so many places have restrictions on loading and unloading after 10 am that it might be difficult getting round to all your deliveries before 10 am. But why park your van in the one place guaranteed to block the road?


Then not two minutes later this ambulance arrived, no flashing blue lights, now noisy siren sharing it's music with everyone within a hundred metres, not even a patient being transported. No, all the driver did was park just here, on the bend. The bus driver can not now see if anything is coming the other way and has to take a chance. There is no danger in him taking a chance of a collision, just blocking the road. If there is something coming the other way there is now much less room for him to get out of the way. All the ambulance driver did was park there for 5 minutes, neither he, nor his partner got out of the ambulance and after 5 minutes he drove away again without blues and twos going so he didn't spend the 5 minutes checking with his control where exactly his emergency was.

So what was he doing in Fleet Street, apart from causing problems that is?

More Road Works

More road works, but, and what a good idea, these are being carried out on the section of road that is closed anyway so here is a first, road works and no additional disrupting. Still very quiet in the Bay, not just Torquay. Traders around the Harbour area are complaining the work on Rock Walk is driving trade away. Well it is having far reaching effects because Paignton is quiet, Brixham is quiet, even Newton Abbot is quiet. Come to think of it, it is February which is usually quiet in a seaside town in England, I bet even Benidorm is quiet.

More and more cars are driving up and down Fleet Street, even parking down there both of which are illegal and not much seems to be done about it. I know it is a long way round via the diversion but when we drive along Fleet Street we are aware of the dangers and drive within our speed limit of ten miles per hour. Some of the late drivers tell of cars getting up to 50 mph which IS asking for trouble. Part of the problem here is that drivers will remember that they never got stopped nor heard of anyone else getting stopped and continue using Fleet Street as a short cut even when the Sea Front is open again, which will be soon, I hope.

Oh yes, FirstBus X80 drivers, I know you are new to using Fleet Street but a couple of reminders, buses have a speed limit of 10 mph (yes, I know one or two of our drivers also need reminding of this speed limit) and we do NOT blow our horns at pedestrians who are in our way. It is a pedestrianised street, pedestrians have right of way, sorry that should read "pedestrians have priority." You just have to wait for them to move in their own good time.

And finally, about stopping in town. It seems to have been established that 12s and 12As will stop at all 12/12A bus stops in Union Street, Fleet Walk and Abbey Road what ever their destination. Also 12s and 12As heading to Brixham will also pick up and drop off in Lucius St and Belgrave Road. However buses heading for Newton will not stop on the Strand and buses heading for Brixham will not stop outside the amusement arcades on Cary Parade. I hope that has cleared that little problem up.

Nice to be Appreciated

When I went into work today it was nice to see this notice on the notice board. We all worked hard on Monday afternoon, some drivers finishing work over 2 hours late due to the problems created by the flooding. A little note like this lets us out there at the bus stops and stuck in the diversion know that some one appreciates the effort we put into keeping an effective service running.

Most passengers also stated their thanks that we continued to provide the service despite the massive traffic jams that built up around the Bay as traffic was diverted to avoid flooded roads.

For the last two days it has been a bit chaotic as buses moving up and down Fleet Street have had to dodge the council trucks and the workmen relaying the roadway. The hole in the road shown in the photo below has now been made as good as new. This wasn't a fill with tarmac job either, hundreds of blocks had to be carefull set in place with the workmen some times working only inches away from the wheels of passing double decker buses. Well done those council workmen.