St Ives Bank Holiday Market

As usual for a Bank Holiday Monday, St Ives Bus Station is closed today because it is full of market stalls. But Station Road  is clear of stalls, so Cambridge-bound guided buses can call at their usual stop there.

Whippet's website notes the following: Monday 26 August - bank holiday market in St Ives, bus station closed, see signs for alternative stopping points.

But I could see no signs up at the bus station advising travellers where to catch their buses.

I could find no information on the Stagecoach website or on www.thebusway.info

The bus timetable available on Cambridgeshire County Council website for Stagecoach route B shows the timetable for Bank Holiday Monday, with west bound buses calling at St Ives Bus Station Bay 4  - which is plainly impossible because of the market stalls.

A temporary bus stop in Station Road for west bound buses would be a simple way to solve the problem.

There are signs up in The Quadrant advising motorists not to park there because the spaces would be needed for buses.

Bank Holiday market - St Ives

Today ( Easter Monday) St Ives Bus Station is closed due to market stalls being sited there. Cambridge-bound buses are running from their usual stop in Station Road. It's not obvious where Huntingdon-bound buses are running from, but it's likely to be The Quadrant, where, for once, the District Council has put up big notices preventing car parking there.

Congestion in Station Road, St Ives

This week's Hunts Post (29 August) didn't drop through my letter box until Friday, and although I had looked at the online version earlier in the week, I  missed a short letter from a St Ives resident that was on page 7. It was about the chaos in Station Road, St Ives, on market day ( Monday 20 August) due to a bus picking up passengers at the new bus stop, with cars queued behind it, and a bus coming the other way, from the Cambridge direction. The letter writer thinks that whoever decided on the site of the new bus stop hadn't 'given the idea much thought'.

I wasn't in St Ives the following Monday (26 August) for the Bank Holiday market. Did any readers of this blog  see how the new bus stop performed, whether the bus station was taken over by market stalls, and whether buses had to be diverted?

St Ives bank holiday market

Once again, St Ives Bus Station is full of market stalls, so buses are having to run from The Quadrant. Fortunately only a Sunday bus service is running today, so congestion at The Quadrant shouldn't be too much of an issue. As with the early May Bank Holiday, Station Road there are no stalls in Station Road.

Busway news in this week's Hunts Post

There are four items in the Hunts Post (16 May) about the busway. On page 2 is a report about the proposed bus stop in Station road, St Ives, outside the Hyperion auction house. It is likely to be completed by the end of June. The County County held trials which confirmed that there is room for a bus standing at the bus stop to be overtaken by another bus. However, local councillor, Debbie Townsend, reiterates concern about congestion. Next is a charming story about a bus driver rescuing a family of goslings who had walked onto the guided busway (page4). The letters page features a comment about the fact that the Bank Holiday market once again occupied St Ives Bus Station and questions why the market should be allowed to take precedence over the guided buses. In an earlier post, I noted that Station Road had no market stalls this time, yet the buses were diverted via Meadow Lane. Lastly (page 35) is a report about various changes to bus routes around Cambridgeshire. There may be changes to the bus service between Huntingdon and Peterborough - this would happen if guided buses from Cambridge were to be extended to Peterborough. The current hourly local service to Alconbury and Alconbury Weston will be affected.

St Ives Bank Holiday Market

I am constantly amazed at the lack of joined up thinking when it comes to Bank Holiday Markets, and the Michaelmas Fair, in St Ives. Market stalls fill the bus station, which is closed to buses for the duration of the market. And so it was today. Buses coming off the busway are diverted from the Park & Ride via Meadow Lane and have been calling at the stop in The Quadrant. There seems to be no published information about this diversion - no notices displayed the the bus station, and nothing, as far as I could see, on the Stagecoach or Busway websites. Huntingdonshire District Council put up notices at either end of The Quadrant to say that the parking bays were out of use during the Bank Holiday Market (presumably to create space for the buses) but the anarchic motorists of St Ives were ignoring the notices. The District Council also put up a notice in Station Road forbidding market traders from setting up the stalls in that road. This meant that guided buses could have used Station Road as normal, and the Meadow Lane diversion was strictly speaking unnecessary. Today, the Bank Holiday Market was a lot smaller than usual (blame the weather) so the usual level of inconvenience for the travelling public was not reached.

Threat to St Ives market

The Hunts Post reveals that Andy Campbell of Stagecoach wants to run Service A right through the centre of St Ives via Market Hill and Hill Rise. Market traders fear that his will displace up to a third of market stalls from their regular places. Mr Campbell has been invited to the next meeting of St Ives Town Council (14 March). Mr Campbell's view is that re-routing buses through central St Ives would improve the service by preventing them getting stuck in the St Ives one way system at peak times.
Hunts Post (29 February, page 13)

Michaelmas Fair

Every year at the beginning of October is the Michaelmas Fair, when the centre of St Ives is taken over by a giant funfair. It lasts three days - Monday Tuesday and Wednesday. Monday poses a bit of a logistical problem - the space used by the regular Monday market isn't available.

So what happens? The market moves into the bus station.

And what happens to the buses? They run to and from the bus stop in The Quadrant. This is the notice that appeared in the Bus Station - but no dates or times are given.

It does appear to implicate the District Council as the cause of the chaos

This bus stop is on a one way giratory road system, so buses bound for Huntingdon have to go right round the loop, which only adds to the traffic problems.

This year nobody had though to cancel the usual car parking on The Quadrant - so every time a bus called at the stop, all other traffic ground to a halt. The Quadrant bus stop really isn't designed for buses terminating or waiting for extended periods. Here is The Quadrant on Michaelmas Fair Monday.

So why is this crazy situation allowed to happen? Not easy to answer. But maybe its because markets, buses and roads are controlled by different bits of local government and nobody has thought to look at the problem as a whole.

The delays caused by The Quadrant situation must have contributed to delays on the busway.

As I had to travel in to Cambridge about 12.45 I decided not to risk catching a bus from The Quadrant, but instead walked to the Park & Ride for the 12.48 Service A - which left on time and got me to my destination on time.

Letters about the busway in the Hunts Post

Three letters about the busway in this week's Hunts Post ( 31 August 2011, page 7). First, malfunctioning ticket machines, and a driver unable to give refunds for money lost in a machine that did not issue a ticket. And in the same letter, a comment about drivers sounding the horn as a warning to people using footpath crossings along the route - apparently it is optional, rather than mandatory, and the letter writer is rightly concerned about this hazard as the evenings get darker. My point, in an earlier posting, about bus diversions to make way for the Bank Holiday Market is raised by the owners of a business in Station Road, St Ives. Their concern is to impress on Hunts District Council, that, if the town is to attract visitors using the busway, they need to be dropped off and picked up in the town centre at the bus station. Failure to ensure this may result in 'destruction of retail trade in St Ives'. Finally, a comment about the County Council's claims that the busway would be 'reliable, fast and frequent', and especially that the timings are now slower that the old service 55 via the A14. The writer has noticed, as I have, that the Whippet 1A is often quicker on its old route than the guided buses. And what has happened to the promised extension of the service to Hinchingbrooke Hospital, which helped to justify building the Huntingdon contraflow bus lane?