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.

Millionth passenger on busway

This week's Huntingdon & St Ives News & Crier (19 January, page 3) reports on the millionth passenger on the busway - Christine Chandler from Colne who was travelling from St Ives Park & Ride to Addenbrooke's with her father.

Elsewhere in the same issue (pages 12-13) Andy Campbell of Stagecoach reports that usage of the route has more than doubled (50,000 a week) compared with the old 15, 45 and 55 routes pre-busway (24,000 a week). Many of these journeys are being made by new bus users, people who would otherwise have driven to Cambridge via the A14. Cllr Steve Criswell says the county council is now wanting to increase the park & ride capacity, and hopes that the busway will eventually attract 3.5 million passengers per year.

St Ives Markets

Last week's Hunts Post highlighted the conflict between bus services and the markets in St Ives, specifically the fact that the Bank Holiday Monday market takes over the bus station, and buses have to load and unload in  a narrow street nearby. A letter in this week's Hunts Post ( (7 September 2011, page 7) takes up the theme.  The Michaelmas Fair happens in a few weeks' time, when again the bus station is usually closed to buses.The writer notes that over 80 buses  are timetabled for a Bank Holiday Monday, and more than 100 on the Michaelmas Fair Monday. He challenges Huntingdonshire District Council, which runs both the markets and the bus station, to clarify their intentions about use of the bus station.