Farewell 2011!

So, here we are now in the final hour of 2011, and what a successful year it has been for the blog. Viewing numbers for this blog have again risen hugely during 2011 with on average 137 people a day viewing PTOTPA. Truly remarkable. There's a phrase kicking round at the moment, "Blogging; Never before have so many people with so little to say, said so much to so few". But that's simply not what its about, its about giving people 'hopefully' interesting things to read, about what they're interested in, in a space where people can understand what the writter is on about, and people can interact. I don't do this to attract huge numbers, but even so, I never thought the blog could or would be as popular as it is today. For this, I must once again bow down to Graham Richardson who through his efforts brings in many extra people who otherwise may have never even discovered my corner of the internet. Plymothian Transit brings in approximately 730 people a month to PTOTPA, around a quarter of all my views, and has passed on many of his regulars to here in months and years gone by, so as afore mentioned, thanks once again to him.


Towards the end of the year I introduced the PTOTPA 'Live' concept where I would update a Facebook site for general news, new photos, new posts, and anything else of interest. This has had a good response so far, so thanks for your support, I hope its been of use to you. The Twitter account has been used to both live updates as I'm out and about, as well as a documentation on my activities on various forms of transport. This currently has 19 'followers' to it. Just to remind you, you can view my posts on the Twitter account without having to 'Sign up' to twitter yourself. I have included a readout of my latest posts to this account on the right hand side of the blog page, as well as a link to both the Facebook and the Twitter account. I appreciate these mediums aren't to everyone's liking though!    


So, the future of PTOTPA. Time for some serious talk. It is highly likely I will be leaving the region during 2012 to take up a place at one of the UK's fine universities, providing that my effort pays off this year at A-Level, and I get the required grades to enter the courses I choose. This will of course mean I won't be in Plymouth to be able to update you on news in the area, so during this year the fate of PTOTPA will need to be decided. I've been thinking over several options, and of course there at the moment is plenty of time to sort it out, but I shall introduce some of my thoughts to you now.

1. I continue to write PTOTPA with the help of a 'team' of regular contributors who can feed me news, in which I will then process and produce posts

2. I open applications for someone to take over PTOTPA, with my assistance and writing alongside myself


3. I open applications for someone to permanently take my place as editor of PTOTPA


4. Withdraw the title 'PTOTPA', and change it to something more general, covering a larger area

5. I close PTOTPA, end of. 


Please do feed free to make your thoughts known on this. I would hope that I will be able to start a similar blog focusing on whichever city I end up in come September, but undoubtably many of you won't be interested in constant news feeds from the likes of Birmingham and Huddersfield etc. 


So anyway, here's so a successful 2011, but there are many serious challenges to come up in 2012 including the huge re-tendering exercise of Cornwall's route network in the coming months. Thanking you gracefully, to all my readers for your continued support and readership


Laurence