(22 Jul 2020, 1:52 pm)Andreos1 wrote An interesting read and one that really smacks home how difficult it can be to get to/from hospital using public transport.
I genuinely wonder if these difficulties enter the mindset of planners and commercial teams. Visiting friends/family or attending out patients via public transport shouldn't be a chore, shouldn't be difficult nor an expensive experience.
It’s a real problem. Largely invisible as patients have no other choice but to make the arduous journey via Stockton or pay for taxis/lifts as it’s the only way to get treated. It’s even worse for parts of the Durham coast who fall under the North Tees trust.
Rationalising clinics to one location in a NHS trust seems to be fairly common, but the transport provision to facilitate this seems to differ greatly. Up in Newcastle the link is provided by fully fledged stagecarriage services, integrated into the rest of the network, such as the 47. Down in Hartlepool it’s a inter-site transit minibus, must be pre booked and priority is given to staff and not for use by visitors. Some journeys are fee and others are chargeable but there’s not much reasoning to which are free and which aren’t. Only picks up-drops off at the hospital so is only truly of use for inter-site travel unless you live walking distance to the hospital in the first place.
I felt as if using Flex via Wynyard was cheating the system. Then I realised that’s bizarre - just give us a proper service and we would have to jump through hoops.