Worst bus interchanges/stations

[northwichcat]

Bishop Auckland Bus Station is awful, its huge, exposed and you have to literally visit each stand to find out which stop your bus goes from because it doesn't have a display with stand information, just a timetable on each shelter. Least it has a toilet.....

I had that problem at La Linea bus station in Spain.

 

[phil8715]

Although the connection for the railway station is perfect (about ten yards at the closest point), Blackburn bus station is horrid. For a town of 105,000 and 40-50 buses an hour, it is unmanned (the nearest staffed information point is in a box room 0.3 miles away), and only has row after row of plastic shelters (and a roadside shelter about 100 yards long, behind the photo below):

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/32/Blackburn_bus_station_-_DSC03742.JPG

Too true. I live in Rishton not too far from Blackburn, and the Boulevard bus station is a right dump. Mind Transdev don't help matters when none of their buses connect.

That box room has now closed. There's no bus infomation office now. apart from National Express office which is in a nearby travel agent on Darwen Street behind the bus station.

 

[Statto]

Bishop Auckland Bus Station is awful, its huge, exposed and you have to literally visit each stand to find out which stop your bus goes from because it doesn't have a display with stand information, just a timetable on each shelter. Least it has a toilet.....

If I can throw in London Victoria Coach Station too (especially Stands 12-20), it is a horrible experience, The waiting areas are small, pigeons are everywhere and the smell is horrid. The Greenline one across the road maybe a darker place but least it appears clean. Victoria is not a Coach Station befitting of London when you consider all the infrastructure projects around the city

Victoria coach station is horrible, & the worst thing about it is you have to cross the roadway[keeping an eye out for other movements whilst you do that] from the stands to board your coach, rather than the coach going up to the stand, & the doors at the stands aren't automatic either[bit like the doors at stands at Preston bus station.]& can be opened by the passengers.

Plus at the arrivals hall, theres gangs of touts trying to sell Travelcards.

http://g.co/maps/su4nf

This is pathetic in a different way - look how spacious and big it is, and because they placed it just-too-far-away from where all the buses actually go, it gets 4 buses an hour during the daytime, two of which go nowhere useful, one just goes round the corner and only one is useful, going to St Albans. Meanwhile, a short distance away 14 buses an hour go between Hatfield and St Albans, using four stops plonked on the sides of a dual carriageway (three of which don't even have any timetable information, thanks to Herts removing the old bus stops without any form of replacement... that's another story though)

So there you go, one bus station that looks really good but is so underused the one time I went to catch a bus from there recently, the driver just skipped it and drove straight past, expecting nobody to be there!

That looks a bit like Bootle New Strand bus station, with the only difference the road going the other way at the exit.

 

[Railguy220]

Prudhoe rail interchange isn't too good. The buses leave before the train arrives so you have to wait in a bus shelter which is nowhere near where the bus actually stops!

 

[northwichcat]

Prudhoe rail interchange isn't too good. The buses leave before the train arrives so you have to wait in a bus shelter which is nowhere near where the bus actually stops!

There was a rural South Yorkshire bus route which was shown in the SYPTE Penistone line booklet a few years back that stated buses are held to connect with late running trains. I don't know if this still runs or if it is still held. The bus route isn't still shown in the train timetable and I don't know the exact route/service number to be able to search for a separate bus timetable for it.

 

[philjo]

Workington bus station is not somewhere where you would want to wait for long! (though at least you are inside if it is raining)
not very helpful if you have luggage on the x4/x5 keswick/penrith services as these are coaches so the luggage is in the boot underneath - but the railings in Workington bus station mean you have to walk round to the wrong side of the bus & climb through the boot to pull the luggage through (as it went in on the other side in Keswick!) I had to do this last time I was there- caught the bus from Keswick as decided to take a detour round the coast line to Lancaster on the way home.

 

[Drsatan]

I don't like Newport bus station (rebuilt in 2007) - although the location is perfect it's smaller than the previous one and looks as though it belongs in Miami as opposed to the centre of Newport.

 

[wintonian]

I vote for Winchester bus station; leaky, cold and wet and mostly condemned - it does have a greasy spoon though.


Winchester - Bus Station Shelter Faces by Community Archive, on Flickr


Winchester Bus Station 2 by Phil Le Garçon, on Flickr


Winchester - bus station by malvinka, on Flickr

 

[Tim B]

Ah, the Parkhouse bus station. Yes, besides some buses that have to pass simply as the road design forces them to go through (but, some drivers drive through the no entry and skip completely), there's only really one or two that 'call' there and I've never once in my life stopped there to let someone alight or board.

Recently one of the screens has fallen down and there's a cable hanging down that's capped off with blue tape. I really hope it's not live!

It is surely the most pointless bus station ever and has so many individual stops when there's never likely to be more than two buses there at any one time. With the amount of grass and weeds growing, you'd think this station was about 20 years old when it's about 2 at most.

I've looked on all streetmap maps I can find, but can't locate this Parkhouse Bus Station in Hatfield. Where exactly is it please ?

 

[wintonian]

I've looked on all streetmap maps I can find, but can't locate this Parkhouse Bus Station in Hatfield. Where exactly is it please ?

Google says here

Street view

 

[Deerfold]

I used to live too near Slough and used its old bus station from time to time. Ugly concrete, dank, depressing (when my employer wanted permission to install something there the council said it was owned by First and First said it was owned by the council)!

So I thought a new bus station would be a huge improvement.

Umm, no - it's been carefully designed to ensure you can get rained on inside.

 

[j@r]

Workington bus station is a dark damp scruffy place, you wait for a bus at the risk of being defecated on by the many birds that inhabit the roof girders, it is often strewn with litter although a cleaner is employed a couple of days during the week, there is no cleaner over the weekend, there's an information booth which is always jam packed full of inspectors and drivers, not the most inviting of places, in the evenings its always full of youths shouting and carrying on, and in general it is very out dated, also the departure points are very close together especially for buses bound for Whitehaven and Keswick and is often completely blocked, so it definitely gets my vote.

 

[Mutant Lemming]

Knutsford bus station is also very outdated.

.

After the next round of Cheshire service cuts it will become obsolete.

 

[northwichcat]

After the next round of Cheshire service cuts it will become obsolete.

The only 'medium priority' route for funding in Knutsford is the 300 Knutsford Town Circular. The 27 Knutsford-Macclesfield, 49 Lower Peover-Knutsford-Warrington, 88 Knutsford-Wilmslow-Altrincham and 289 Northwich-Knutsford-Altrincham are all 'high priority' routes for funding.

If the 300 is axed I would imagine the 88 would be rerouted via Longridge and the 289 would be rerouted via Lilac Avenue and Tabley Road and possibly the 27 would be rerouted as well.

However, while at present the 300 is only medium priority, there are plans to replace the various doctors' in Knutsford with a super medical centre. If that happens the 300 could well become high priority in the day time and medium priority in the evening.

 

[A0]

45 posts in and nobody's mentioned Milton Keynes (until now )

 

[12CSVT]

45 posts in and nobody's mentioned Milton Keynes (until now )

At least Milton Keynes is right next to the railway station (where it should be)

 

[A0]

At least Milton Keynes is right next to the railway station (where it should be)

But miles away from the shopping centre - which is where most people want to go - as a result it's now disused.....

 

[Deerfold]

45 posts in and nobody's mentioned Milton Keynes (until now )

I was trying to forget it.

And hoping it had improved. I was last there in 1996 - I (and my gf of the time) had just missed a connection and had 2 hours there on a Sunday. Wonderful times.

I seem to recall a hole in the wall with water dripping through it. and about 4 buses in total in the 2 hours we were waiting.

 

[LexyBoy]

Ah, bus stations... I remember them! How old-fashioned!

Stroud used to have a fairly nondescript bus station - big concrete area with ten or so bays, an information booth and some benches. The council decided it would be much better off selling the land and relocating the buses to the road adjacent.

So now instead of a bus station we have four or five bus stops on either side of a busy road, with no way of knowing which side your bus will be going from (many reverse at a roundabout immediately after departure), and no way of seeing the bus numbers as there's usually a bus parked in front. But that's OK, because only pensioners use the bus, and they get the same one every day :roll:.

Reading too has recently lost its sort-of-bus-station next to the railway station, with the buses stopping at various points around town. Rather better done in this case, as although bus stops are more spread out, all or most buses to a destination or area depart from the same stop(s); any in any case many routes avoided the old bus station anyway.

Moral of the story: don't complain too much or your bus station might be "modernised" out of existence!