Park and Ride

[Tamesaint]

Has anyone had experience of the new Park and Ride scheme from Adanac? Does it run to schedule? How long does it take? In particular how crowded is it after the match?

[Teamsaint1]

Good questions . thought about trying it today as the train line to Salisbury was closed as usual. 

[TheAlehouseBrawlers]

Doesn't look like too many use it going on the number of responses. We did go in by bus a few weeks back and did notice the P&R go flying past as we were stuck at a bus stop and in traffic so guess it goes direct to the city centre.

But it wouldn't have mattered how you tried going westbound yesterday it was gridlocked, over an hour from city centre back towards the M271. Sounds like it was from a bit of chaos on the M27 from earlier in the day.

[Tamesaint]

3 hours ago, TheAlehouseBrawlers said:

Doesn't look like too many use it going on the number of responses. We did go in by bus a few weeks back and did notice the P&R go flying past as we were stuck at a bus stop and in traffic so guess it goes direct to the city centre.

But it wouldn't have mattered how you tried going westbound yesterday it was gridlocked, over an hour from city centre back towards the M271. Sounds like it was from a bit of chaos on the M27 from earlier in the day.

Yes. It took us 2 hours to travel 2 miles from the ground.

[spyinthesky]

It is interesting that many people call for Park & Ride facilities in Southampton which is fair enough.

However when the Nursling site has been offered up for home games and weekends, particularly around Xmas, hardly anyone uses it.
 

[Kenilworthy1959]

22 hours ago, spyinthesky said:

It is interesting that many people call for Park & Ride facilities in Southampton which is fair enough.

However when the Nursling site has been offered up for home games and weekends, particularly around Xmas, hardly anyone uses it.
 

It might be that people had poor experiences of the previous schemes. I signed up for the one at the Ordnance Survey in 2003/4 and it was so appalling I stopped using halfway through the season even though I had paid for it. We frequently got drivers who didn't know the way back after the game, a couple of times I had to direct them. And the buses used to get stuck in gridlock. Sometimes it was two hours after the final whistle before I got back to my car. With a two hour drive after that it just wasn't appealing. And it didn't operate for evening games.

[Mozz]

I use it regularly and find it pretty good.

It usally runs to schedule and busses tend to be at Adanac Park waiting well before departure time (once every twenty minutes).  On a normal day it takes a touch under 20 minutes each way.  I find the main benefit after the game is that it can dart across town before the post match traffic has started to build and I can then jump straight on to the M271 so all pretty seamless.

The bus after the game can be busy, but not so bad that I've ever seen it be full.  My main issue after the game is that it still runs to a timetable.  For a Saturday 3pm kick off this means busses back to Adanac Park every twenty minutes starting at 16:50, with the final one at 19:00.

My feeling is it would be better to just queue up both busses post game and have them leave when full.  With the current schedule the 16:50 means missing the end of the game and the 17:10 (whilst usually fine) can be tight in the event of a lot of stoppage time.  This was the case one game last year (poss Charlton).  This meant narrowly missing it, the bus leaving mostly empty, and then loads or people having to wait twenty minutes for the next one, which also had the knock on effect of taking twice as long as usual to get back to Adanac Park as by then the post game gridlock had started.

It's a Bluestar bus with a route number 'PR2' so there is a page on their website with timetables for matchdays - https://www.bluestarbus.co.uk/services/BLUS/PR2.  There's also a 'PR1' that serves central station and West Quay.

As a note, the park and ride only runs on weekends (I think it's NHS staff parking in the week) so not an option for midweek games.