A tale of three bus stops

Most people would think of bus stops as being fairly static items, happy to stay in one place and make their contribution to society in a steady, predictable way from one year to the next, without any great desire to travel or see the world.

However just lately one or two of ours have had a certain amount of wanderlust and today has been a day for rounding them up and bringing them back to heel!

Shortly after we rerouted the A along Passfield Avenue in Eastleigh, back in 2008, we agreed with the Borough Council to put up a new bus stop either side of the road near the junction with Nightingale Avenue. Two bus stop flags were secured to suitable poles and that was the end of that! However, just recently we noticed that one of the flags had escaped, destination unknown, leaving the public without guidance as to where to stand to wait for the bus.

We thought we had seen the last of it, but this morning a colleague at Eastleigh Borough Council reported that our errant bus flag had been rounded up in Fleming Park, and was now sitting by her desk. So we have retrieved it and (after a strong lecture about not getting any more big ideas), returned it firmly to its rightful pole.

You'd think that might be enough bus stop excitement for one day, but not in the heady world of Velvet!

We have a 'temporary bus stop' - a flag on a short pole imaginatively grounded in a painted old wheel hub, that we can move from place to place, for example when roadworks hinder access to a normal stop.

Our temporary stop has already made one previous bid for freedom, when it escaped from Henstead Road in Southampton, before mysteriously reappearing a few days later - we still don't know where it went.

However, more recently it was posted in Leigh Road, Eastleigh to stand guard over the never-ending hole-digging activities of Southern Gas Networks, while the real stop at the Good Companions pub was marooned in the middle of a long section of single line traffic.

Bored with this assignment, the temporary stop vanished within a few days of being sent there and - until today - had been missing for several weeks. We imagined that by now it was probably sunning itself on a South American beach, but not so! A tip-off earlier this afternoon from a member of the public led us to a private car park underneath a block of flats on the outskirts of Eastleigh town centre, where our temporary stop was standing in all its proud glory, nowhere near a road never mind anywhere a bus might go!

How amazing that by sheer chance, on the same day, we have managed to round up both our errant bus stops!

Indeed, we have been rather more successful at relocating bus stops that we never expected to see again, than we have at relocating one that we actually meant to move!

Today's third and final outbreak of bus stop action was meant to involve moving the outbound flag on the S2 route in Handel Road in Southampton, from its current pole (no longer served since the route changed in September), round the corner to a new pole recently erected by the City Council for our benefit.

Mikey and Simon duly set off in Vanessa, our Rapid Response International Rescue N-reg Ford Transit, armed with all the necessary tools for the job, drove all the way into Southampton City Centre, pulled up at the appropriate spot, switched on the flashing orange lights to make themselves feel important, threw open the back of the van and.... realised they'd left the ladder behind so they couldn't actually get to the flag!!!

Unplanned bus stop moves - 2, planned bus stop moves - nil, and a job for another day!