Wednesday, August 29, 2012
Prats of The Week - South Gloucestershire Council
Therefore, without further ado, I am pleased to be able to award this week's second "Prats of The Week" Award to South Gloucestershire Council.
For why?
For their super duper wizard idea to open a 200 space car park (costing £1.3M) in June 2011, for a park and ride scheme in Stoke Gifford near Bristol.
What's wrong with that?
Nothing, under normal circumstances. However, there are two wee problems with the scheme:
1 An average of just 10 motorists a day are using the car park, and
2 The bus service for the park and ride scheme will not be in operation until 2015.
Brilliant!
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To make the odd mistake is only human but, to really cock up, you need a council.
ReplyDeleteIt would be a lot worse to have a park and ride scheme where you had the buses running for three years before the car-park opened. Quite honestly, I think you've picked the wrong target here, Ken.
ReplyDelete... and could you make those bloody code letters a bit less of a challenge? I had to refresh them five times before I got one even partly readable!
ReplyDeleteGloucester is well known for being stupid as well as crap.
ReplyDeleteThey relayed the A48 ring road a mile from Gloucester city centre. They included an extra lane as a bus lane into the city. On that lane they included a set of traffic lights to enable the bus to leave the bus lane into mainstream traffic. No buses use the road as there is no bus route. The traffic lights have been set and stopp all the traffic on the other lanes so that non existent buses can join the main lanes. Confusing - yes. Sensible - no Waste of public money. Gloucester -renowned for thei stupidity.
A well deserved award. I am all in favour of measures to encourage greater use of public transport, and fewer cars on the roads, especially in city centres. However, this scheme is ludicrous!
ReplyDeleteHere in Bolton the Lostock station had it's amall car-park tripled in size at huge expense to become a parkway, and, yes, you guessed it, reduced the number of trains calling.
ReplyDeleteThere's another twist to this as well.....
ReplyDeleteThe car park was built partly to serve as an overflow carpark to Bristol Parkway's own car park, which is heavily used during the week. South Gloucs. Council felt that until the "Bus Rabid Transit" scheme was built (a scheme which most people in Bristol object to on the grounds of it being another badly-routed bus service without the "rapid" aspect), the car park would serve as a money-spinner by mopping up the rail commuter business.
However, the council initially failed to introduce any parking restrictions on the surrounding roads that rail commuters already used, and were surprised that nobody was parking in the pay & display car park, but were continuing to park on the roads.
Furthermore, they had failed to look at the planning application that Network Rail had submitted (to the self-same council) to convert the surface car park at the station to a three-storey affair - this is now being built and will manage the capacity issue AND cut out the 5-minute walk from the new council car park.
So, it's anyone's guess if or when people will start using this £1.3m tarmac beauty.