Bad parking blamed for Torquay bus route changes

'These streets didn’t suddenly become narrow'

Careless drivers parking badly are being blamed for two Torquay streets missing out on services from Torbay’s new fleet of ultra-modern electric buses.

Stagecoach says the new buses – due to be phased in on the bay’s roads in the coming weeks – won’t fit through Park Road and Hartop Road in St Marychurch.

But one local transport campaigner says inconsiderate parking is the root cause of the problems, not the size of the new buses.

The 35A bus will no longer serve Park Road while the 35C will no longer serve Hartop Road. It will use nearby St Marychurch Road instead.

Stagecoach managing director Peter Knight said the issue was primarily one of vehicle size, with the new electric buses taking up more road room than their diesel predecessors.

But campaigner Beth Huntley, known as Torbay’s ‘Bike Mayor’, said the service changes had come because the new buses can’t fit past illegally parked cars, revealing a deeper problem than vehicle size alone.

“These streets didn’t suddenly become narrow,” she said. “What’s changed is not the road, but the fact that larger buses simply expose how obstructive parking has been allowed to go unchallenged for years.

“Parking, which also prevents the use of footways, should have been enforced for that reason alone.”

People with limited mobility, wheelchair or pushchair users needed proximity to their bust stops, she said. Relocating stops to a nearby road with uneven, steep cut-throughs and no safe crossings was not an ideal solution.

And, she added: “This is a clear example of motornormativity – the assumption that streets should prioritise private cars, even when that undermines public transport. Allowing illegal or inconsiderate parking to force buses off residential streets signals that parking for a few is more important than convenient, accessible transport for the wider community.

“We shouldn’t be congratulating ourselves for having electric buses if those buses can’t serve the people who need them most.”

Stagecoach is delivering 55 zero-emission buses across Torbay, and says it is providing cleaner, quieter and more sustainable travel.