This week we’ve asked the good people of St Albans what really they’d like to know about motoring in and around the City. There were plenty of answers – many exasperated ones and some that are really quite technical. Over the next few weeks we’ll be trying to answer as many of these questions and the points raised as possible – and try and give you as many points of view on these issues as we can.
One of the things that both drivers and residents of St Albans find challenging (and we suspect this is pretty much everywhere in the country) is the motoring chaos that comes with the school run. This highly emotive subject covers all sorts of motoring law and the behaviour of both motorists and pedestrians (see our post about Teaching Children to Road Safety). One question that was raised was ‘can coaches travel on any road? – so can school buses travel on roads that are not designated bus routes?
We asked Google this very question and didn’t get much help! Obviously those who driver coaches and buses have to do additional training, specific tests and as part of this there is plenty of the Highway Code for them to refresh/learn but the particular question doesn’t ping out when you search for it.
So – when Google doesn’t tell you the answer, what do you do? You ask another local business. We asked the team at PPH Coaches whose fleet of iconic yellow coaches with blue signs are a very familiar site around here – especially with the amount of school runs that they do.
Their answer was an emphatic ‘yes’ to “can coaches travel on any road?” – as long as there are no local regulations banning coaches (there are in some areas of the country), the points at which they stop are safe and the driver is adhering to the rules of the road, coaches can use any road which is safe. School buses do not have to adhere to designated bus routes and as long as the rules are obeyed, coaches can go anywhere.
We are great believers in courtesy, consideration and common sense here and also understand that it’s really hard negotiating your way around St Albans when school run traffic abounds – we’ll be looking at that a bit more in coming weeks.