FANCY taking public transport from the centre of Blackpool to Fleetwood? Forget it - according to a £50 million Government website, it's impossible.

Travellers heading to St Annes have a little more luck - a one and a half hour train journey, involving a change at Preston, will eventually get you there, as recommended by Transport Direct.

A Sunday newspaper report claimed that the website had shown travellers heading from the resort to the port to take a journey of two-and-a-half hours.

It would involve two train journeys (bizarre since Fleetwood isn't on the rail network) and a bus journey, as well as three separate walks.

The Citizen's experiment on Tuesday lunchtime sadly, couldn't replicate that unusual diversion - in fact none of our searches, from various Blackpool addresses to a number of areas in Fleetwood, even acknowledged the existence of public transport in the area.

A journey search from the Citizen's office on Clifton Street to Fleetwood Pier at 10.30 am on Tuesday morning produced a page of red letters informing us that no journey could be found to suit our requirements.

A few tweaks - time moved to 12.30, leaving from the Counting House pub in Talbot Square and heading to Fleetwood library instead and the results remained exactly the same. A quick glance at Blackpool Transport's own website revealed we could have taken a bus from nearby Corporation Street at half past ten on the dot or waited a mere 12 minutes to cross the road and take a tram. Both would have had us in Fleetwood in around three-quarters of an hour.

A trip to St Annes showed a little more promise but, once again, much faster bus services were ignored in favour of a lengthy train trip taking almost an hour and a half.

Hailed as a boon to struggling travellers which would revolutionise public transport when it was first unveiled four years ago, Transport Direct went public with little fanfare at the start of this year.

But the system's eccentric results have come under fire from transport experts and opposition politicians alike.

Independent transport consultant, David Woracker, said: "It's a badly written computer program by people who know very little about public transport."

The Department for Transport has emphasised that the journey planner is the first public version of the new system - find out for yourself on www.transportdirect.info.