11 March 2010

Derriford Hospital - one giant car park?

we share your frustration that we are unable to offer a reliable service to our customers.


Bit of an 'emergency post' today as spent whole evening trying to sort out major computer problems, including a virus scan which took three hours! Found and dealt with one virus, but its still not a happy machine. If I can just keep it going for another couple of weeks, a brand new PC will take its place...

Couple of messages on Facebook last night:

Citybus:We apologise but yet again the road works at Crownhill and the ongoing saga of Derriford Hospital traffic delays are causing major disruption to our services. These hold ups are entirely beyond our control and we share your frustration that we are unable to offer a reliable service to our customers.

First: PLYMOUTH: Delays around the Derriford & Crownhill area due to road works and rush hour traffic. Affecting services 7, 15, 17 and 83/84/86. Thanks for your patience.

Citybus: There is no improvement at Derriford with some buses not moving for 20 minutes. Traffic management is non existent. How you are supposed to get home and how we are supposed to run a service is beyond us.

You can sense the frustration in that last message especially! I was on one of those buses that were stick at Derriford, and the bit about buses not moving for twenty minutes was correct. I noticed that the Real Time displays at Derriford bus stops have now been turned on at last, but only seemed to be display times of buses rather than the usual countdown in minutes when the bus carries the correct equipment. It was quite amusing watching the display scrolling through all the buses which were due to depart from the bus stop when clearly nothing was moving at all. Our driver was told to continue out of service on the 50 as he was due to have finished at 4:30 and didn't get out of Derriford till gone 5:30.
We were all told that the traffic would be managed out of Derriford. When they ran the trial before Christmas it was clear that when there were staff on duty at the exit of Derriford Hospital traffic was kept moving really well, and when they were not there, nothing moved. Traffic cant get out of Derriford because it gets blocked by traffic trying to get in to Derriford. With staff on hand at the Derriford exit to ensure traffic can exit the site, everything is kept moving and it all works well.
Surely its not too difficult to arrange that?

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