So we are looking for a timetable for the Derriford Hospital Park & Ride service as we are not happy with the poor information given to us by Target Travel themselves. Lets try the Plymouth City Council web site as they are pretty good these days. The home pages gives us a link to the Public Transport section
That's a useful link there for Park & Ride sites...but that only gives you the maps and details for the main Park & Ride services with no mention of the Derriford service at all. So lets go back to the Public Transport page. There are actually three links above all of which seem to point to bus timetables
Looking promising is the link in red. I shall ignore the link below as it warns you of a large download.
Looks quite professional and more importantly it seems up to date. There is an instruction panel so it seems to be reasonably easy to use so lets try the search button. How about entering “Derriford Hospital” in the keywords box – 14 results returned so lets scroll down through the list
60 George Interchange – Derriford Hospital – that sounds familiar Trouble is that link does not work! (Its just as well as its not been a 60 for a while). Maybe if we search “The George” 0 results! If you search on just “George” you see that its called either George Interchange or George Junction but you still just get the 60 route in the results – which still does not work. OK Lets try a different tactic – lets use the Contents button
If we click the button we see a filter box stick the word Derriford here and you see a nice list of services down the side including PR3 – it seems we are getting somewhere at last so lets click the link
At last! Now I should point out that the first two times I clicked the link either nothing happened or it went to the wrong page but that maybe a one off as this time it worked and I got a nice easy timetable. Now why couldn't Target Travel have that timetable up on their site?
The service itself is very popular and seems to be running well. The drivers are friendly and the buses are nice and smart and comfortable new Enviro 200s.
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It really is a shame it isn't better publicised, even the timetable at Derriford is very unclear. It is a very well used service - trips leaving Derriford in the evening peak often have a standing load and drivers indeed always are friendly and have a smile on their face. A big well done to Target Travel on their success on this service, as it always is nice to see smaller companies doing well, however I really do believe they could gain even more customers if it was better publicised! Come on Target, update your website with clearer timetables for every route, maybe make them HTML files like Citybus do so they're easier to view on mobile phones. This will take some time and perhaps a little investment, however I have confidence that any time and money invested into updating their website with clearer timetables and perhaps publicising their services better across the city will prove worth it, as I am sure it will gain more passengers across all of their services.
ReplyDeletetom, why don't you offer your expertise to target?
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