I THINK the citizens of Lancaster but especially the bus users and shoppers are due one huge apology from those responsible for the bus station fiasco.

It is no longer an inconvenience, one that we were all prepared to cope with in the first few months, it has now become a trial of endurance. People are getting wetter and tired of humping bags of shopping twice as far, through tortuous routes to alien bus stops. We still pick our way around gritty puddles, past noisy machinery, negotiating piles of gravel, skirting thick lengths of long cable and at times barricaded in by badly erected heavy wooden fencing.

There have been no seats to sit on, no shelters to wait in, no where to go for a cup of tea before a journey. George Street has no telephone box nearby to request a taxi, thus making it very difficult for lone travellers to manage heavy luggage on holiday journeys. And it feels frightening to be stranded in the city late at night, especially in winter.

The prolonged unfinished state of the bus station is criminal, especially as it was six weeks in from its closure over a year ago, before a hammer was picked up or a wall knocked down, and still delays go on. Why?

As well as an apology, the people of Lancaster and its visitors are overdue an explanation.

Mrs Pauline Purver

Mainway Skerton