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Do any countries in on the continent have special hospital bus services?

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175mph

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In the UK, it is of course, commonplace to see dedicated shuttle buses especially for a hospital in that town or city. In Scunthorpe for example, the Hospital Park & Ride number 9 service serves stops on Doncaster Road and Cliff Gardens, before entering the hospital grounds and following the internal road up to the Out patient's entrance before continuing all the way round to the 'main entrance' on the Church Lane side, before going down that road back into town again.

Now, I was wondering, do any towns or cities in countries such as Netherlands, Germany or France etc have specialized bus services for people going to and from a hospital and stop on the site a bit like my example mentioned above rather than just calling at a stop on a road just outside the hospital grounds?
 
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I know Prague has a number of services that mingle around the city with the whole purpose of connecting tram/metro stops with hospitals.
 

175mph

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In my city in Germany, we don't have any special hospital buses except for one clinic that's in the middle of the woods where no other bus goes, so there's a phone bus a few times a day (it only comes when you phone it in advance) https://xn--mehr-fr-hagen-1ob.de/linien/taxibuslinien/t1
A bit like demand responsive services such as Lincolnshire CallConnect then?

I would have thought that in a country such as Germany, they would have regular, fixed services everywhere, even in very rural locations?
 

30907

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A bit like demand responsive services such as Lincolnshire CallConnect then?

I would have thought that in a country such as Germany, they would have regular, fixed services everywhere, even in very rural locations?
1. Sort of, but tend to operate a fixed route.
2. No they don't. Urban areas are generally excellent, but rural evening and weekend buses are often infrequent or non-existent, or run as shared taxis.
 

JonasB

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Maybe or maybe not, depending on how you define it. My local hospital is right in the middle of the city and served by several bus routes on the streets just outside the hospital area, three routes on the western side and at least 8 on the eastern side, stopping at five bus stops in total. There is however a bus route that goes through the hospital area, but it is very infrequent and rarely saves you more than 150 m of walking to your actual destination.

There are however dedicated buses to the hospital from the surrounding countryside and smaller town, but they need to be prebooked and if there are few passengers it might be a taxi instead of a full sized bus. The really good thing about them is that they are free for everyone with an appointment at the hospital.
 

dutchflyer

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As for NL; depends on how you look at this. About any hospital has a link to publ transp, mostly bus, but tram or metro also feasible. These may or may not-it all depends on local geography and roads, enter the grounds of hosp or just beside, but this is not an issue at all. In fact in den Haag there is even a grand INterchange for tram into bus (also going ''upcountry'') just beside the major hosp. To please those a little feable in walking the last 200 mtrs there is now a manned but self-guided little thingy shuttling between the front door and the BS These are thus the normal everyday lines that form part of the local contracted as ordered by the region network.
Besides that for people less able to walk or handicapped in whatever grade about any region also has a kind of trnsp on demand, mostly in (specialised) vans/minibuses and as a matter of course hospitals/clinics will be a major destination for these. Mostly restricted to people having been registered for that-cost payable varies dramatically, from normal PT to higher. HOspitals do not run their own buses, though there were a very few very specialised ones that did in the distant past (outlying location far from roads for TBC-suffererers in the sandy dunes near the sea or in the woods). I read somewhere that running that is tipical for the UK (and that a Dutch newly appointed general manager of a big London Nat-Heatlh hosp. could not believe this and wanted it to scrap asap and refer people to PT or taxi-would have been tons cheaper too).
Note that we here have seen an enormous concentration of smaller hospitals into bigger and newer and thus far fewer hospitals in the last years, thus also making for need for good connections-though probably at least 80/90% of hosp. visitors will come by car-for which usually quite hefty parking charges apply.
As a rule of thumb about the same applies to BE and DE, though the rules of para-transit in vans etc may differ more markedly. in fact most continentals would not even grasp the meaning of this Question-they just take this for granted.
 

30907

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in fact most continentals would not even grasp the meaning of this Question-they just take this for granted.
The question was actually about buses serving a route within the hospital grounds. From this thread so far, it seems that this is just as rare in mainland Europe as here, though hospitals "there" seem to be generally better served.

I checked out the regional hospital at Poitiers - main stop on main road, a couple of less frequent routes serve stops within the hospital complex.
Back in the UK, the hospitals best known to me are:
Airedale - one route runs round the complex, main stop up (definitely up!) at main road;
Blackburn - bus station at hospital entrance, but buses often get caught in car park queue :(
Bradford, Leeds (x2) - stops at entrance/s.
 

EM2

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Malta has a bus route that goes right to the Mater Dei hospital outside Valletta, or at least it did before Arriva took over. Anyone know if it's still the case?
 

paddington

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Malta has a bus route that goes right to the Mater Dei hospital outside Valletta, or at least it did before Arriva took over. Anyone know if it's still the case?

Yes, at least 25 buses stop at the hospital, including one direct from the airport: https://www.publictransport.com.mt/en/routes-timetables/6331
https://www.google.com/maps/place/S...8d331a9830e7cfc!8m2!3d35.9018828!4d14.4755656


I don't know if it's just me but I feel that hospitals in the UK are located very inconveniently for access by train, most of them tend to be right in the middle of two train or tube stations, requiring a walk that is just long enough to feel a chore (for able-bodied people - obviously mobility impaired people may not be able to do this walk at all) yet if you don't have bus travel included in your pass it seems expensive to pay for a short bus ride.

Even the hospitals that have a station (Northwick Park, James Cook come to mind), the entrances seem to be located as inconveniently as possible for the train, though hard to see how this could have been avoided in these two cases.
 

Clip

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Margate's QEQM haspital has a bus route through it.
 

JonasB

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The question was actually about buses serving a route within the hospital grounds. From this thread so far, it seems that this is just as rare in mainland Europe as here, though hospitals "there" seem to be generally better served.

Can it also have something to do with how hospitals are built? From my point of view there are very few hospitals in Sweden where a bus route within the hospital grounds would make sense.
 
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