Interchange isolation.

[Inspector Knacker]

Waiting for the train last night to pick up a relative and musing over the irony of this splendidly isolated folly. The product of 'experts',..... it stands as a testament to not letting 'experts' who don't use buses tell those who do, how to.
The supreme irony being, that as the price of it went up and the content went down, they should have realised that the saying '....build it and they will come' was just a throw away line in a film and not an industry recognised basis for spending millions on the Marie Celeste of interchanges....and while all this money was being spent, ........ they didn't notice there are no buses .... anywhere.

[steveL]

You are so right. In many ways, Tumbleweed Junction sums up HBC completely.

• 9 Years to Build
• Cost went up 100% - and no one batted an eye-lid
• Original plans had to be scaled back because of cost
• No one actually bothered to ask the main bus company if they planned on using it until it was virtually completed.
• Panic over the approaching Tall Ships meant that overtime was thrown at it like money was growing on trees
• When completed, the spin machine went into full gear with Hargreaves claiming that it would do wonders for the job prospects of the unemployed
• In the end, the main company didn't want to use it and HBC cut the transport subsidy which reduced the bus service still further and it turned into the town's most expensive car park

[brassed off monkey]

Pammy must have come up with that little "Gem" whilst spreading the marge on the sarnies down 177 way

[fred c]

Pammy spreading Marge..


Not a nice thought to have.. 

Only You..... pmsl

[mk1]

Ah that explains it.......................
A while back I saw Pammy walking back from the Manor and she was spitting out ping-pong balls.
It all makes sense now!

[Stig of the Seaton Dump]

Do they have wi-fi in the cells ...if so let us know and we can have a whip round for your bail.

[Benefitcheat]

Being positive it is a good car park and

I don't quite understand how and why such an expensive project could fail so miserably and not be questioned or rescued, how would HBC react if the money given to connected care was spent on a trip to Blackpool for half of owton manor and then while they were they a room service bill came in that meant they needed to double their spend?

Ok it's a weak analogy but I'd bet they would ask more questions of CC than they do of their own team of experts.

If they'd bothered to work with rail companies to give us a more regular and later service that would have been something but I'm probably being unrealistic.

£50 says that if/when rail services increase and regular buses use the place that within 12 months we are asked to foot a 7 figure bill for repairs/upgrades/alterations.

[Stevef]

how would HBC react if the money given to connected care was spent on a trip to Blackpool for half of owton manor and then while they were they a room service bill came in that meant they needed to double their spend?

Are you sure they would notice? Anyway stop giving people idears.

[Inspector Knacker]

The trouble with the interchange is that is a flawed concept from the outset and appears to have been created by those who have little real idea of the use of public transport in Hartlepool'
We needed a bus station, so we then should ask where are most passengers going, logically, the shopping centre, so you build your bus station adjacent to the shopping centre at a point where most buses can drive in and out of with minimum deviation from their route and remove a load of bus stops from the centre of town in the process.
The present place is based on the misplaced layout of a town where large numbers of people travel out of town to work and return to get buses outside the station to take them home, this is not the case in Hartlepool, unless of course they know something about the future that we don't and the plan for Hartlepool is to become a dormitory town for central Teesside and we have to travel out for most services.
There is no way any sane bus company would divert it's buses and inconvenience the massive majority of it's passengers to pay a visit to the interchange to service a couple of trains an hour that discharge a dozen passengers on a good day who then usually get into their cars anyway.
A totally flawed concept.

[steveL]

I agree totally. A half-baked idea which was ill thought out and whose main achievement is to demonstrate once again HBC's constant inability to work to a budget.

The Victorian's understood urban layout and this sorry affair started with the decision to build Middleton Grange away from the town's heart - Church Street. For the last 40 years the whole area has been left semi-derelict with no clear idea what to do with it.

Of course it's 40 years old now and therefore should be 'coming to the end of its working life'  so maybe we can build a new shopping centre where oit should have been built in the first place.