Walsall is quite dangerous too, there have been a few incidents over the years since it opened, the most serious being when an Arriva bus being driven the wrong way down a one way street, collided with a few other vehicles including a double decker bus, killing one person & injuring another.
Last time I was there they were just using it to turn around with buses picking up on the roadside outside. I have never seen buses reverse out onto the road, it was always reverse into the Malakoff from the road (or sometimes swing in and reverse across the apron if the turning circle was good enough) and depart forwards - if for no other reason than the passenger waiting area was to one side and passengers walked out over the apron from the road end of the site so buses reversing in means they are facing the right way for passengers to approach safer and quicker.
When I was there in 2022 buses were driving in then reversing within the bus station until the back of the vehicle was next to the waiting room and the front pointing out towards the road.
Batley is too big for the level of service it gets now, but was perfectly sized for the level of service it got when built. It is rather overbuilt of course, but the same could be said for several other of the smaller stations in West Yorkshire. This wouldn't be so bad if the Combined Authority had the budget to properly staff them, and was a bit more selective about who they leased the retail units to. Batley and others now have shuttered retail units that just make the places look abandoned. Even when they were occupied the quality of tenants at the various units was rather sketchy IMO.
It's good, but it does have a number of issues. During the daytime it's far too crowded because there isn't enough seating at each stand, the frequent and poorly-worded safety announcements are far too loud (I'd rather listen to "see it, say it, sorted" on a loop!), and once it quietens down after 6pm the gangs of feral youths become quite intimidating. The multi-storey car park on top is ugly and grim to use, and now can only be accessed by the central staircase which doubles as the "free" bus station toilets. It's also right at the top edge of the town centre, as the main commercial core of the centre has migrated south over the years towards Kingsgate. Some stands get a handful of buses a day, while others are double-booked on the hour or the half-hour.
I know that services in Batley have declined and the one way system doesn't help it either. And yes, there's a few others like Cleckheaton that have the same issue - the retail units are shuttered, the footfall isn't great because of location, they are a magnet for youths, and the upkeep for maintenance and security is more than the budget can bear (as I mentioned about capital grants vs. revenue budgets).
I would say Huddersfield IS fit for purpose. That the level of security etc. isn't enough isn't really a reflection on design. As you say, Wakey has the problem of feral kids, and I felt the same in Dewsbury during the middle of the day! Is the multi-storey being grim and ugly a reflection on the bus station... I'd say not. Similarly, the double booking of stands is a failure of execution/management not of design.
That's my recollection too. I can't recall vehicles reversing out into the road.
It is no bad thing service-wise to be able to promote interchange. The issue at Keswick is simply that it's not got the space to have too many buses there at once. Not helped by the fact that loading times are often slow and traffic in the summer can be appallingly bad.
I wasn't suggesting that Huddersfield isn't fit for purpose, just responding to it being described as "excellent". It's got the bare bones of an excellent facility but there are a few things (both in design and management) that bring it down. The facility itself is certainly fit for purpose (apart from the car park on top, which yes isn't a part of the bus station itself but is part of the same complex) but some of the decisions made by management leave rather a lot to be desired. A wider, less cluttered and more spacious concourse would be nice, but because it's a 1970s structure with a big concrete car park on top, there's not much flexibility to play with.
The current iteration of St. Margaret's Bus Station effectively having been designed to cater for a National Express monopoly, it's struggling to accommodate the influx of Flixbus coach services.
I'm not convinced this is a majority view. It certainly isn't perfect - there wasn't much surprise although there was naturally distress when someone was killed using the pedestrian crossing in the middle - but my experience is that the shelters are generally adequate, it's rare to get multiple buses trying to use the same stand, and the allocation of buses to stands is sensible (so all Queen's Square buses to Bootle go from adjacent stands).
I’m a regular user of Mansfield bus station and I find it quite spacious in comparison to many other bus stations. The end nearest the shop has lots of space and daylight with plenty of seats although I must admit that the waiting areas at the other end are not so good. The other bus station I use regularly is Nottingham Victoria and that is dark, draughty and cramped in comparison to Mansfield
that's part of the reason why Skylink was moved from the bottom end to allow NX to use the stand, IMHO St Margaret's could do with stand allocations being looked at again
Stand allocations are always being looked at for all bus stations but you don't want to change things just because. The question is whether Flixbus would actually want their passengers waiting next to a staffed National Express customer service desk and ticket machines or would they prefer to keep their passengers as far as possible away from NatEx staff as possible - I suspect National Express would also prefer to keep separate but they shouldn't really get a definitive say (unless they are paying a lot for the facilities they staff) but Flixbus should get a say on that.
I don't even think that you need to make such large changes. Just move Flixbus to stand SA for pick ups and remove some of the bollards there. Bar a few local buses in the early hours when the rest of the bus station closes, that stand is largely empty and has a kerb along the full length and plenty of space for a lift to be deployed/lockers to be opened. You have right there got a wheelchair accessible coach stand but the LCC have refused to put Flix on it for seemingly no logical reason.
This evening, for instance, I witnessed Flixbus passengers retrieving their own luggage, straying onto the adjacent bay for the service 127 as they did so due to lack of space next to the coach. It looks quite hazardous for the passengers.
Since the rebuild the taxi rank bays are very narrow to accommodate the pointless cycle lanes that taxis (mostly uber ones) often pull onto to drop off.
Also with Chelmsford the size of bus station is smaller than the size of the old bus station/garage which it replaced, now with flats /shops/First Essex office
It certainly wasn't meant to be patronising.
Chelmsford city centre has a second bus station, if you can call s number of stands in the ground floor of a multi-storey car park a bus station. It's well located for the market and shopping mall but not good for anything else including waiting for a bus.
North Yorkshire doesn’t spend money on buses, let alone bus stationsHas anyone mentioned Skipton yet? A typical North Yorkshire cheapskate effort....bleak, windswept and rainswept with no facilities other than a long unheated shelter with an above ankle-height gap at the bottom to let in the worst of the weather. What a contrast to the bus station at Keighley just a few miles away!
That looks more like a bus depot than a bus station.Lord knows how we survived places like Blackpool (and I'm not of the view that it's "Health and Safety gone mad").
Most bus services terminate at the Westgate instead, this is where most people are going
It looks like a car park above with a bus station shoved underneath underground. It does look pretty unpleasant. However parts of Blackpool in the daylight do as well.
Indeed that is exactly what it was. More remarkably, it was opened in 1939, and buses were rather smaller then (7'6" wide and 30' or shorter). It may have been the first example of a bus station with development above it, but definitely not the first covered bus station, which was Workington in 1926.