Jury Duty

Not me, but my father who's being called up to Worcester at some point in May. So I'm trying to get a route plan for him. See they'll refund expenses incurred by public transport, but not car-parking fees; those have to be applied for separately.

So here's the deal - going by car according to Google Maps will take around 25 mins, as he needs to be there around 9am he should be able to leave at 8 with time to spare.

Now for public transport, via DirectGov I am presented with four options

1) Take a bus over the river to the Brindley Arms, then another bus from there back into town towards Worcester, then another bus from Chatley to Worcester.

2) Take a bus to Worcester Crown Gate, then catch another to get to the Court. Though with the distance from the latter he might as well walk.

3) Take a bus to Kidderminster Rail Station, Catch a train to Foregate Street, walk.

4) Bus to Kidderminster, Bus to Worcester, walk.

Okay now remember the car would take 25 minutes? The shortest time for any of these four options is 56 minutes (option 2) and would mean leaving at 7:33 to arrive at 8:29. The latest he could leave is option 1 (7:38), but would mean arriving at 8:47, yep 5 minutes later than option 2 and arriving 18 minutes later.

The train option (3) which is technically the best and least problematic on connections means leaving at 6:49 and arriving at 8:01. I'm not going to even suggest looking at option 4 which means leaving at 5:37 and arriving at 6:56.

The dumb thing is that a train from Kidderminster to Foregate Street leaves at 8:03 and arrives at 8:30, but according to DirectGov he can't get a bus to Kidderminster in time to catch it. and if he misses that the next one doesn't leave until 9:49. There are basically four trains running - 7, 7:35, 8:03, and 8:31 taking just over 20 minutes to get to Worcester. For those who start work at 9 and use public transport I'm kinda guessing the 8:01 will be pretty darn crowded.

I think I may be called upon for ferrying duties, in one direction at least.