The Bus Station?

Anybody famaliar with Stroud over the past few years will remember that it had a Bus Station. It was not a pretty place. In fact Dank, Grubby even threatening after dark but it was a proper bus station with loading bays, information and ample parking. Although Merretts Newsagent had disappeared from the bus station some years before and the empty shop was boarded up the rest of the adjacent shopping centre was refurbished leading to the replacement of the often not working escalator with stairs and an often not working lift!

The site was located on top of a culverted brook, which due the age and instability of the culvert, led to bus parking being withdrawn and replaced with a pay and display car park which in turn left less bus parking.

Judgement day occurred when Stagecoach sold the remainder of the site lease to the District Council for a reasonable sum (leading to anguished cries of 'assett strippers' by some) and the idea of redevelopment of the site came to be a reality, it was just a question of time. By this stage, services were departing from the town centre and the bus station was a signing on/off point with driver facilities and also a schools service interchange point. Even the travel shop was relocated to John Street.

Services eventually returned to the bus station after the District Council enforced a restriction of PSVs in the town centre meaning that vehicles above 33 seats in capacity could not access Russell Street (with the exception of buses involved with rail replacement services). The travel shop also returned.

And then the redevelopment came!

The existing bus station was replaced by a series of 'on road' stops as a temporary measure whilst a new interchange was to be built at the railway station. STILL WAITING!

Is there another bus station in the country with an 'A' road passing through the middle! The safety fears of people being run over passed without realisation although this perhaps due to the fact that traffic rarely moves at a significant speed due to congestion!

To illustrate how it is, I provide a picture of an ordinary weekday, taken at a quite random moment from the adjacent car park. Please note the delivery lorry illegally parked and the Stagecoach double deck parked up on bay N in the foreground!

The original bus station used to be to the right on a site now occupued by a cinema.