Guest 1190- Registered: 11 Feb 2014
- Posts: 1
I was in the Dover Express with my idea to establish a direct bus-route from Dover to William Harvey Hospital Ashford. The campaign was 'snubbed' by Kent County Council. The Kent County Council will not pay for a new bus route with Stagecoach as K.C.C claim there is no 'social need'.
From what I have gathered since; people are suffering even more as patients/hospital users are not given money back on transport costs from recently. From my travels it takes ~3 1/2 hours to get to the William Harvey from Dover and people without their own transport like some people on the state have to take an arduous journey which could only take ~45 minutes.
Many people I have worked with/work with and relax would find this proposed bus route most convenient and there were over 80 texts back supporting the original campaign.
I am at a loss as to how to progress with this = which people have agreed is the right change while Dovers' hospital is being built.
If people would like to build on what I started it is an open idea.
P.S. Bus leaflets for Dover and other towns using W.H.H are being made available in the William Harvery Hospital - I was just passing and made myself hook up Stagecoach and W.H.H's Chief Executive. He forwarded me in on his email request to Stagecoach for the leaflets.
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
i believe there was a direct bus service between dover and ashford many years ago, i don't know if it called at the hospital.
anyway back to the point - the journey is indeed arduous changing at folkestone and going through all the villages to ashford.
i don't see kcc subsidising a service in the current financial climate although such a service would still be needed after our own hospital is built.
Guest 649- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 14,118
Margate is like that change at Ramsgate.
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
with margate i find it quicker to get off of the train at ramsgate and catch the frequent buses.
Alec Sheldon
- Location: Dover
- Registered: 18 Aug 2008
- Posts: 1,037
My poor wife has to be at William Harvey on Sunday 16th.Feb. at 10 am for a cortisone injection in her back, it is an all day job. I don't drive but my neighbour was going to take her but she is caught up in the Thames Valley floods and might not be able to get to Dover in time to take her. Does anyone know the cost of a Taxi from Dover. to Ashford.?.
Sue Nicholas- Location: river
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 6,025
Try the Volunteer Bureau at Deal.They have volunteer drivers ,Age Concern maybe able to help
Sue Nicholas- Location: river
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 6,025
Try the Volunteer Bureau at Deal.They have volunteer drivers ,Age Concern maybe able to help
Alec Sheldon- Location: Dover
- Registered: 18 Aug 2008
- Posts: 1,037
Thanks for that Sue. I have got it sorted out now.
Captain Haddock
- Location: Marlinspike Hall
- Registered: 8 Oct 2012
- Posts: 8,085
FWIW there was a letter in the Dover Express earlier this year which ran:-
Whilst the restructuring of health care, giving two high-tech 'centres of excellence' at Ashford and QEQM, served by Outpatient Facilities and Minor Injuries at Dover and Deal, will provide the hospitals we need for the 21st century, they require a well planned and integrated transport system to serve them.
When the NHS representatives appeared before the Scruitiny Committee at DDC I put it to them that most of us are going to need their services when we are either coming into this world or leaving it.
It is the old and the young who are most likely to need public transport provision as they are the least likely to have their own transport or spare money for Taxi fares.
They are also the ones for whom, with mobility problems or encumbered with pushchairs and children, changing buses becomes more than a minor inconvenience.
Whilst it makes clinical sense that maternity services are located in major hospitals, where post natal care of the highest standard can be offered, there is at present no direct bus service from Dover or Deal to William Harvey Hospital to allow partners, relatives or siblings to visit new mothers.
For the elderly there is no direct bus which will carry them from Dover or Deal to QEQM.
We can not expect a complete duplication of outpatients service in Deal and Dover so where is the direct bus from Deal Town to Buckland or Dover Town to Deal Hospital?
As a minimum we need a service running between William Harvey Hospital- Dover Town - Buckland Hospital -Deal - Deal Hospital - Sandwich - QEQM.
Whilst this would be serve patients/visitors, incentivising other passengers to use the buses would cross-subsidise the service.
If the eastern section travelled via Westwood and the route extended to Margate it would give some of the ½ million high spending visitors a year to the Turner Contemporary a chance to visit prize winning Deal High Street or join the 1/3 million visitors a year at Dover Castle for example.
Extending the route from QEQM to the factory outlet at Ashford would give locals a chance to shop there for goods not readily available in our own town centres as well as giving 80,000 Ashford residents the opportunity for a night out at the proposed Dover Multiplex Cinema or to enjoy a day trip to France.
One hopes that NHS planners of all people are not suffering from myopia, and that when finally revealed, the transport plan is much more than an improvement in getting some patients to some hospitals.
As most of us realise by now, once an inadequate plan is imposed by those who we foolishly thought knew what they were doing, it takes decades to remedy. I won't bother citing the many local examples!
"We are living in very strange times, and they are likely to get a lot stranger before we bottom out"
Dr. Hunter S Thompson