'This is so wrong on many levels' - Readers' comments on possible hospital bus service cuts

Staff at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary have been warned buses may no longer call at stops on the hospital campus at Little France because parking congestion is causing delays of up to 45 minutes. Readers were not impressed...

Kerry Jane: This is disgusting on so many levels. The frail and elderly already travel ridiculous distances to get to the Royal since many specialities have been moved from Western and St John’s. Secondly, is there any concern for the staff? Shifts are long and especially hard at the moment but you are happy making staff walk late at night after 12-and-a-half hours through unsafe paths and streets.

Louise Jane D'Arcy Nicholson: This is so wrong on many levels. Rather than cut back solve the problem. People need the bus service to visit relatives and it could be patients on the buses as well.

Alan Bygate: Not a chance of Lothian Buses withdrawing services. If they were to do that on every route that experiences delays there would be no bus service in Edinburgh.

Julie Logan: That hospital should never have been moved out there. It should have been kept in Edinburgh city centre where many buses could get to it or folk could walk. Selling the old ERI for a pittance was wrong!

Chris Japp: The hospital building in town was an old, degrading building. Having the hospitals in one place in brand new high-tech buildings is surely a much better idea.

Amanda Angel Jane Hoatson: What about people who don't drive or don't have own transport?

Elaine Inglis: How will staff get home? My daughter has childcare and must be home for a certain time for the childminder. No chance of delaying further.

Jennifer Clabbie: It’s always been a problem with there not being enough parking in the hospitals. It will be a bigger issue since they opened the Sick Kids there. They should have planned for another huge car park for this as the one that's there is already massively strained. It’s nuts. Staff need car parks also. They need to come together with a solution – they can’t just cut buses from hospital stops.

Tracy Purcell: It’s dangerous enough going to bus stops in the winter at night so to be walking further alone is putting staff and visitors at a higher risk of attack.

Tina Lorimer: More limited stop services during rush hour would help. There's only two that avoid the Royal from the Sheriffhall park and ride in the morning now and there used to be about four.

Richard Fogarity: Wait 45 minutes for a bus to get through the car park, or walk one minute to the main road? I know which I would prefer.

Colin Gilbert: Free parking sounds like such a good idea, until you consider how many more people will drive and the extra congestion. You have to remember that parking charges are really noy just about revenue, they also give you a (blunt) limiter on numbers. What's the point in a theoretically "free" space if you have to drive round and round for ages trying to find it? And the people who really need to park will struggle, which is unfair. Public transport or bike should always be option A where possible, with driving only used where necessary.

Prom blow

An angry mum has blasted Balmoral Hotel chiefs after her daughter's school prom was postponed with just 48 hours’ notice.

Judith Burney: Businesses have been through enough over the last 18 months, and the last think they want to do is cancel anything. Sounds like they had little choice due to Covid so it’s hardly them being wicked. The outraged mum needs to get a grip – there are worse things that could happen!

Bryan Stewart: Things like this are going to happen for the foreseeable future. I’m sure her wee cherub will survive without her prom. She’d be the first to complain if it went ahead and the service was awful because of staff shortages or God forbid the hotel didn’t bother about people’s health and employed infected staff to spread the virus.

Lesley Mellon: We all survived without proms and we are in the midst of a pandemic. She should feel sorry for the folk struggling with Covid instead of moaning about something we have little control over.

Nan Mcewan: She should be thankful that's all she's got to complain about.

Poppy Robertson: Like many others my daughter’s prom was also cancelled last year, never to be rescheduled. Not much sympathy here