Church Link
The Story So Far
Much against the wishes of the bus operators, Sheffield City Council has embraced the social distancing thing in a big way. In particular, buses have been banned from Leopold Street and Pinstone Street ...
... (where there is plenty of room to organise the two metre gap) ...
...a moved them to, firstly, Arundel Gate - where there isn't!
But for passengers approaching the city centre from the west via West Street (there's a clue in the road name!) it is particularly grim.
sFrom West Street, buses turn right into Carver Street (see map above) ...
... where four "temporary" stops are located.
STOP PRESS - a Carver Street stop - boarding stops are similar!
These stops, of course, are on far narrower pavements than those they replace, two for alighting and two for boarding. There are, no surprise, no shelters and no information. It is not an attractive place at the best of times.
fbb would not fancy alighting or boarding there at night.
fbb would not fancy alighting or boarding there at night.
Buses then continue to the bottom of the road where they have a very tight right hand turn into Wellington Street.
It is VERY tight!
You are aiming for the main road (Charter Row) espied through the gap, but you now have to turn right and along Wellington Street ...
You are aiming for the main road (Charter Row) espied through the gap, but you now have to turn right and along Wellington Street ...
... then left onto Rockingham Street ...
... the left agin on to Charter Row before rejoining the already circuitous route on Furnival Gate thence left again at the roundabout and on via Arundel Gate back into the city centre.
But there is a snag.
You can't go down Furnival Gate, you must turn left. To encourage you there is a very solid traffic island and buses do not easily jump up and down kerbs with impunity. So initially buses have to divert via Charter Row, Cumberland Street and Eyre Street ...
... to rejoin their path back to civilisation.
But never mind, eh? The City Council is digging up the island and replacing it with a bus only link to allow progress all the way down Furnival Gate.
The PTE has hidden the temporary bus stop signs in a dark corner ...
... ready for opening today - a week after the diverted routes were diverted.
Yep, there they go again!
STOP PRESS - temporary stops were put in place yesterday ...
... then quickly removed and sent back to the naughty corner.
STOP PRESS - temporary stops were put in place yesterday ...
Sheffield folk, enjoying a lengthy but non-stop circular tour of The Moor shopping area, have wondered why the Carver Street diversion was not delayed until after the road works were complete.
But that would have been sensible.
Indeed the whole project seems potty. At the moment there is plenty of room everywhere for social distancing and, as city centre shopping increases, Boris (following the bits of "the science'' that suits his policies) will have reduced "the gap" to one metre or none.
But at the moment there is PLENTY of room on Leopold Street and Pinstone Street for the paltry passenger numbers.
At least the Council's decisions will further reduce the footfall in the city centre and much of it will simply not return.
More weeping into their policies!
Maxfield's Make A Move
Somewhat lost in the wilderness, coach companies have suffered very badly through the lockdown. High profile collapses like Shearings etc and David Urquhart have hidden the anguish of the hundreds of small companies whose future must be in doubt.
fbb has not been familiar with Maxfields of Swallownest (near Sheffield). The company's business is for day trips and "extended tours" in the UK.
The company has operated a variety of vehicles in a variety of liveries ...
... and is popular with South Yorkshire folk.
At the moment they are emailing all their customers whose trips have been cancelled under lockdown.
They are keen to stress the extra cleanliness regime in operation. Well done Maxfields!!
fbb has one small query. If your machine omits a cleansing fog, was it worth buying?
In Praise Of Panscrub Episode 86
The "cutting" was a disaster - both bits cracked and, although the front, as shown above, could be bodged back together and would look OK, the rest of the model appeared unusable.
Or was it?
Could fbb make something of the shattered remains?
Add a replacement end wall, a bit of patching below one of the windows and a lot of patching on the other side ...
... but that's "round the back" and cannot be seen from any normal viewpoint; add a chimney, bought by fbb and never used, and a bit of an old bungalow kit left over from something else ...
... on goes some "brick plating" ...
... and there is potential.
Matching colour and style of brickwork is difficult and certainly beyond fbb's Fudge and Bodge skills. But grow some ivy up the walls and ...
... you can't see the joins! In praise of panscrub - yet again. And the colour is not too bad from a distance.
Peterville pump house rises from the shattered remains of the Methodist Chapel. Of course the quarry needed a pump house to keep water levels low in the depths of the excavation. The preserved railway has cleverly adapted the system to provide a water supply for its steam locomotives.
Better buy a water column!
More stuff tomorrow.
Next Virus Variety blog : Monday 22nd June
I'll assume FBB is being sarcastic and that he has worked out that all these bus stop moves & closures have nothing to do with concern about bus passengers well being and entirely focused on shoppers wandering around the city centre with that blinkered idea that all politicians appear to be suffering from at the moment that no one is using buses. Almost all cases like this have resulted in bus passengers having less space and less attractive or easy to access stops. It becomes more concerning every week that this will be the short-term future of buses with politicians once again ignoring them, this time using social-distancing as the excuse, and that the short blip where buses were high up the agenda has gone for some time.
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