On 28/04/2013 11:18, Roland Perry wrote:
You couldn't make this up - especially as ColinR was saying only last
weekend that his wife refuses to use the Ely - Cambridge RRP because
last time she did, the bus got lost.

Anyway, my wife is on the way to London this morning and took the RRP
bus, which was timetabled to take 50 minutes (it's 17 miles, most of it
on the open road).

She said it went a "really strange way", and ended up approaching the
station area over the Hills Rd bridge, then trying to get into the back
end of the station via a road with bollards. But it got stuck (couldn't
work the bollards, nor apparently reverse out) and eventually turfed
everyone off to walk the last five minutes.

I still don't know why they can't run some DMU shuttles up to Ely
because the work being done is north of the station.


Probably less common since GPS became popular, but more than once I have
helped rail replacement bus drivers find their way between stations.
Even with GPS, some of the routes used are slower than the optimum, and
taking a "turn right" GPS instruction prematurely took one coach into a
dead-end street in St. Helens.

In partial mitigation, bus drivers' life is not helped by traffic
mismanagement schemes, and pedestrianisation schemes, that make it
difficult for buses to get to the stations. (In one recent example in
Liverpool, on many days it was probably quicker to walk from Moorfields
to Central or Lime St. than to take the rail replacement bus. )

Bevan