Wednesday, June 24, 2009

The invisible bus stop of Creeting St Peter

There I am, displaying some enthusiasm for my new role, contacting Suffolk County Council in my quest to find out how we get a bus stop. Naturally, this being the supposedly incompetent public sector, I did expect to have to wait for a while. Two hours, as it turned out to be...

My new friend at Suffolk County Council, Paul, e-mailed me a map of the village, with the locations of the bus stops marked upon it. My first thought, "There are bus stops?". So I look at the map and read the e-mail, noting that Suffolk has a number of unmarked bus stops - like the ones in Creeting St Peter... You see, it is presumed that, because you live in the village, you know where the bus stops. Fiendish, eh? And, of course, if you don't live in the village, you'll not care. It's designed to confuse us city types.

The good news is that the County Council are undertaking a programme of signing and roadmarking of bus stops, and providing raised kerbs for ease of access in line with their responsibilities under the Disability Discrimination Act, and I appear to be the right person in the right place at the right time.

I've already worked out what I'd like next...

3 comments:

Costigan Quist said...

"I've already worked out what I'd like next... "

Blow the entire parish council budget for the year on a fact-finding trip to the Bahamas to see how they mark bus stops there?

(I wish the suggestion was completely outlandish - one parish council I know of has done something quite similar).

Mark Valladares said...

The Bahamas, eh? If only our budget went that far. We could probably manage the bus fare to Diss, and if you've seen Diss, you probably woudn't bother with that...

Paul Hulbert said...

A village near us has the opposite problem. It's got a bus stop but no bus service.