Good to see you were driving with due care and attention... If only ambulances had some means of making themselves more visible to other road users, like maybe loud sirens, flashing lights, and a bright yellow paint job - then this might not have happened.

Joking aside, transport and traffic in Preston's a right sod, ain't it? That's if you can *find* a road that hasn't been 20'ed to death, with plagues of speed bumps that force traffic to a practical limit of 10 if you like your spine, or even less if you're on a motorbike and you like living. Thinking University area (sorry, the "Adelphi Quarter", if you please!) here.

We've new traffic islands on major bus routes, forcing double-decker buses to swerve out into oncoming traffic and pull hard 90-degree turns at junctions that used to be an easy merge, throwing passengers around like a bead of sweat in an aerobics teachers cleavage (eg. Plungington Road, Fylde road & Brook street).

Our 'ring road' (jauntily titled "Ringway") doesn't actually 'ring', pulling at best a meandering waddle from almost-one side to almost-the other.

The one way systems are bizarre and counter-intuitive, hopelessly confusing for natives and visitors alike. The entire Fishergate area is a prime example.

Only one Railway station, despite being a city. Lots of recent residential development right alongside the Blackpool line; and the route of the old Longridge line still largely intact, running right past the ever-expanding Red Scar Industrial estate (another traffic problem area). But then who'd expect people to want to easily and rapidly travel from a residential area to an industrial area (I guess our planners never played Sim City, or qualified in 'basic comprehension').

And the buses. Oh, the buses. Two operators locked in competition, for which the public are the only possible losers (referencing the incident in which off-duty Stagecoach drivers threw eggs at Preston Bus services, fare wars, apparently deliberate 'minesweeper' scheduling so the rival service arrives minutes later to empty stops, and so on).

A canal link, so the Preston - Lancaster (used to run right up to Kendal until the M6 was laid across it, slicing it off indefinitely just to make the motorway *slightly* cheaper to build) canal is theoretically connected to the rest of the UK network without open-sea travel. But practically unusable, since you MUST own a second engine, radio, and flares to cross the river Ribble (hardly commonplace kit on CANALboats), book your crossing well in advance, and pray for sufficient rainfall to let them operate the tidal locks.

/Rant
(The Incredible Sulk Finally remembered his password on, Wed 17 Dec 2008, 4:50, Reply)