Continuing saga of Station Road bus stop and congestion at Harrison Way

There is a cracking letter in this week's Hunts Post (13 June, page 6) about several of the on-going issues to do with the busway in St Ives. First, the proposed bus stop in Station Road, close to what the writer describes as a 'dangerous junction'. He recommends viewing the junction on the Fink Creative webcam. The webcam only refreshes every minute, so you may have to wait a while to see a bus coming round the corner. It is a sharper-than-90-degrees corner, and buses have to swing right out to make the turning. He is certain that extending the service A into the town centre will reduce congestion on Harrison Way, but questions why the County Council thinks it must provide a bus stop near St Ives Bus Station when at Cambridge the A does not stop at Drummer Street Bus Station. The existing bus stops at East Road and The Quadrant are being ovelooked as alternatives to Station Road. The letter also discusses the lack of a car park at Swavesey, concern about the extra £2m of government money to ecnourage traffic off the A14, the extra traffic on the A1096 due to motorists coming off the A14 to St Ives Park & Ride, and proposes peak-hour traffic lights at the Meadow Lane roundabout linked to measures to prevent rat-running through central St Ives.

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.