Post Game Traffic

[Gunny Fishcake]

What twat thought it a good idea to have park and ride buses at the bottom of the hill at the away end after the Fulham game empty , engines running and hazard lights on, blocking one lane to the A33 and resulting in grid lock for everybody trying to get away ?

I hope that doesn't happen every game as it's ludicrous and compounded with the road works on the A33 will quickly piss many people off .

[Pandoras Box]

Probably the same person who created the new local (not F1) bus area that faces out onto the road where everyone walks when leaving the stadium, resulting in at least a twenty minute wait until the crowd has cleared?

[Pandoras Box]

Be interesting to know where any bus, car or bike will park once the Thais have built their project.

[Royal Ginger]

Dunno but this bus rubbish pissed me off good and propper. The delay after the Gillingham game made me miss a train I normally get with a 20,000+ crowd adding an hour to my journey home.

[Delboy]

I parked in the red car park and that's the quickest I have got out thought it worked well

[bobby1413]

I was on the Nags Head bus and it was like a badly and overly complicated orchestrated mission watching the organisers trying to release buses.

It's hard to properly judge the effectiveness as I was on the private pub bus, not sure what the normal town ones were like.

[loyalroyaldaz]

They could get an awful of fans away much quicker if they got rid of that stupid safety gate that makes them all walk right round the ground and does absolutely nothing to prevent away fans and home fans mixing !!

[PieEater]

I think they've made an absolute mess with the F1 buses. The new taxi rank was completely unused before and after the game, taxis were still going up the hill to drop people off. Moving the buses to load in the car park now means they want them to wait until the crowd clears before the let the buses go, for a lot people that means missing their train or other connections.

It's seriously making me rethink using them and looking for alternatives, presumably the opposite effect they wanted - to encourage more people to use the bus.

Loading was also slow, just loading one at a time whereas they used to load 2 or 3 at a time in town. It's a new system so maybe they are finding their way, but as a regular user it's a whole lot worse than before.

[Silver Fox]

I get what they're trying to do with the buses but it was pretty obvious that if they didn't keep pedestrians off at least the left lane going down the hill then no matter how many buses you load up they weren't going to be able to get away. Put a rope down the centre line all the way from the roundabout and have a few stewards policing it and you'll be dandy. No excuse for the bloke abusing the stewards in the bus queue and then gobbling at the bus though, not sure what that was supposed to achieve!

[bobby1413]

Loading was also slow, just loading one at a time whereas they used to load 2 or 3 at a time in town

Did they?

I've said before that some games were gut wrenchingly painful having to stand in line for 15+ minutes cold and sobering up whilst drifting past about 6 nicely warmed up buses until you reach the very front one and are let on.

Why can't they do this:

Line of 5 buses
Bus has it's door open and high vizzy person there
Fans go to the shortest queue
Fans get on
At around the same rate all 5 fill up and a higher volume are ready to go.

I guess it's because they don't want 5 buses leaving the area at the same time ... but it's 5 not that many
And you could even have fans get on and wait for around 2 minutes until the bus in front goes

Oh and...

FINISH THE FCUKING RAILWAY STATION!!!!! - I know there's government authority now but it's still thought to be about 5+ years away.

[CrowthorneRoyal]

My self and my two boys (both under 10) went to get a few photos and autogrpahs from the players after the match and wandered back down to the 60f mereoak bus stop at 5.45. Not one bus came past until we gave up at 6.45. We walked back up to the stadium and some RFC staff rang the depot for us. They sent out a bus just for the 4 of us. This was only because I had an email from Reading buses customer service stating that the 60f runs until 18.45...... We eventually got picked up at 19.05

[bobby1413]

My self and my two boys (both under 10) went to get a few photos and autogrpahs from the players after the match and wandered back down to the 60f mereoak bus stop at 5.45. Not one bus came past until we gave up at 6.45. We walked back up to the stadium and some RFC staff rang the depot for us. They sent out a bus just for the 4 of us. This was only because I had an email from Reading buses customer service stating that the 60f runs until 18.45...... We eventually got picked up at 19.05

Bloody hell that's horrendous!

[Silver Fox]

I get what they're trying to do with the buses but it was pretty obvious that if they didn't keep pedestrians off at least the left lane going down the hill then no matter how many buses you load up they weren't going to be able to get away. Put a rope down the centre line all the way from the roundabout and have a few stewards policing it and you'll be dandy. No excuse for the bloke abusing the stewards in the bus queue and then gobbling at the bus though, not sure what that was supposed to achieve!

I know Club Policies is where people moan about things but hats off to the club/reading buses for realising there was a very simple solution to the issues from Saturday.

Also, bus gobber was on the bus again last night and didn't seem quite so rattled, so it must have worked

they probably still need a steward stopping people walking between the buses at the stop mind, almost saw a couple of youngsters get squished last night as they tried to jump the queue and get on a bus in the middle

[RG30]

Moving the buses away from Northern Way has been a smart move as it's much safer. However why can't they load more than 1 bus at a time. Yesterday it took a good 15 mins to get boarded on by which time they had already let cars out of the car park and it was gone 10:30 before we were back in town.

[JeffVedar]

Moving bus from South Oak way to new Coach park has added 30mins to the return journey ..total log jam last night at Northern Way RB.. as was Saturday... needs to go back....

BTW..let me add, Foxtrot Oscar newbie... (saves on replies. )

[Compo's Hat]

Moving the buses away from Northern Way has been a smart move as it's much safer. However why can't they load more than 1 bus at a time. Yesterday it took a good 15 mins to get boarded on by which time they had already let cars out of the car park and it was gone 10:30 before we were back in town.

Cars had already been let out before the out of town buses were let go (which wasn't the case last season) causing problems at the bottom of the hill as they tried to cut on to the other lane. Not as stupid as the council constructing a bus lane on the A33 the wrong side from the stadium mind you!

[tmesis]

What twat thought it a good idea to have park and ride buses at the bottom of the hill at the away end after the Fulham game empty , engines running and hazard lights on, blocking one lane to the A33 and resulting in grid lock for everybody trying to get away ?

If they were empty, implying virtually no fans had left the game yet, why were there queues to get onto the A33?

I hope that doesn't happen every game as it's ludicrous and compounded with the road works on the A33 will quickly piss many people off .

Where do you suggest they put the buses instead?

They had problems on Saturday because the council (or whoever it is who organises the buses) told the drivers to stay in the depot until 5pm, which meant they took about half an hour to turn up, after getting stuck in traffic.

After getting loads of complaints, the P&R manager told them to leave earlier, so they'd be at the stadium ready to pick up fans straight after the game.

I would suggest that the problems weren't caused by the buses (as they did the same for most of last season) but instead the problem is the roadworks, meaning the A33 is running slower than usual. If it's slower, traffic will get onto the A33 slower as a result.

[Silver Fox]

Not as stupid as the council constructing a bus lane on the A33 the wrong side from the stadium mind you!

This issue was obvious to anyone as soon as they saw where they put the bus lane, however the 2 times we've used it so far it's worked as a bus lane and the driver has managed to scooch across without any bother, it is reliant on drivers being considerate mind you, which is not something you want to rely on.

[Elm Park Kid]

Something was odd on Tuesday night; I did my usual drive back from the World Turned Upside Down and when I got to the 'Tesco roundabout' there was absolutely no traffic. First time in the 6 years i've been going that i've been able to drive straight through to the junction. I was back home by 10:30!

[Readingfanman]

Moving the buses away from Northern Way has been a smart move as it's much safer. However why can't they load more than 1 bus at a time. Yesterday it took a good 15 mins to get boarded on by which time they had already let cars out of the car park and it was gone 10:30 before we were back in town.

Yeah, took absolutely forever, did question one of the staff why they were loading one bus at a time and he said "How can he we do it otherwise?" By this point, it was 10:20 and I wanted to be on a bus and go home, and just shook my head and walked off. Reading buses/FC need to really sort out loading more than one bus at a time, that way they should be able to release before the car park which will get rid of a number of issues all at once.