Separate bus and rail stations are the norm in most places as the rail was mainly for freight so tended to be on the outskirts of town whereas the bus was for people to get around the town. Add in the small matter of there not being the space beside rail stations for a major hub for buses (Anwterp is a perfect example of that) and you see why things are so.
Having "hubs" would be nice, but that ain't the way it works in real life so you will always have to either walk between the bus station and rail or, as the norm really is, take a bus/cab between them both.
heelsbrink - I accept that combined bus and rail is an ideal, not a reality, hence my starting point being that it was the norm in the countries listed above. I passed through Antwerp a few weeks ago, but was more interested in the way they have stacked 3 layers of train lines on top of each other with the beautiful cathedral like original station building at the top.
I neither looked for nor saw a bus station - if they are separate then I'll have to take Belgium off my list!
We are well-served with five buses each way each hour (except on Sundays and Bank Holidays when it drops to two each hour) to either the nearby town or, in the other direction to the city, and, being beyond a certain age the fare is free - unlike the train. Buses pass the end of my street a mere 100 yards away, whereas the railway station is three-quarters of a mile away - either a fifteen minute walk or wait up to twenty minutes for a bus, and there is just an hourly train service. On arrival in the town there is a ten minute uphill walk into the town centre, whereas the buses stop as close to the town centre shops as traffic permits.
beyond a certain age the fare is free - unlike the train
That depends on where you live. Within the West Midlands - and afaik within London too, trains are also included with the pass, as long as you are leaving after 9:30.
Totally agree with your points about convenience - was not seeking a bus v train debate, more looking at why they are kept separate when an opportunity arises to join them.
Odense in Denmark in the 1980s had a system of bus routes that ran radially into and out of the city centre. All routes met in the town square where they paused for a few minutes so that passengers could transfer from one bus to another (using the same fixed-rate ticket).
There is also a sizeable plaza in front of the station for buses, but not sure if that is the actual central point. Odense is also supposed to have an excellent network of linked pathways, but that's for another thread, we're already doing two transport modes here!
I agree about transfers. Our local provider (nx) has just "improved" the network by severing routes, so now to get from here to the hospital needs a change (3 routes previously), therefore you pay double for a one way journey!
I suspect that, when the railways were being built, they were a 'new-fangled' thing, and there might have been economic resistance to providing land through existing settlements, especially considering the geographical restrictions on railway engineering in its infancy. Many attempts to establish railways (in England) failed through lack of adequate financial backing, so the easy way was often sought rather than an integrated solution which would have brought the railway into the centre of smaller towns. Larger towns and cities were a different case where, later, the demand for a terminus required the acquisition of sufficient land to provide adequate space for trains to stand between journeys and room to load and unload the goods that they carried. The immediately surrounding land would typically have had a hotel built for passengers to stay, and, I imagine that buses didn't feature in their means of transport, preferring cabs, so there would be no demand for a bus station.
In our nearest city the bus station that was near the railway station closed many years ago, although there are bus stops immediately outside the station portico. taxis actually drive into the station portico where there is a taxi rank. The main bus interchange is at the opposite end of the city (there are almost no shops within a radius of a couple of hundred yards of the railway station - they are concentrated around the bus station - or, rather the bus station has been positioned in the centre of the main shopping area). You would really need to catch a bus from the shopping area to the bus station if you were laden with parcels and bags of shopping, so the bus probably would continue to your chosen destination - or a different bus would do.
Of course there are people who would choose the train, either for commuting or shopping trips, but the journey times are little different than what the bus takes - and there is a comprehensive 'underground' Metro train system (that becomes above-ground outside the immediate city centre) which travels as far as the airport and the coast on each side of the main river that runs through the urban area and divides it. For many years train passengers had to cross the river by boat or cab as there was no railway bridge.
Historically many of the bus companeis (e.g. the ex-railway owned Tilling Group businesses which became part of National Bus) DID operate out of railway stations, as the two modes of transport were historically linked by ownership
. However several things combined to affect this: 1) Station location. Think of Cambridge - the station is a mile or more from the town centre. Not ideal for a central bus depot. Bristol is similar. So as towns grew and redeveloped the municipal authorities provided central bus terminii, often based on the sites old tramway depots 2) Beeching. Take Yeovil as an example, which had a centralised "Town" station which served Southern, Great Western and bus. Beeching closed this, with the two remaining stations being one and two miles from the town centre. So once the BR board demolished the Central station building, a new bus station had to be built. You can see the same at Lancaster, where the bus station is adjacent to the site of Green Ayre station - another of Beeching's casualties, leaving the remaining Castle station - half a mile from the bus station. 3) The transfer of the railway owned bus companies (e.g. Southern / Western / Eastern National) to the Tiling Group delinked the connection to some extent. Even though Tilling was later nationalised, the conenction was never remade. No "joined up" thinking. The problem is that at no point during the Beeching closures was any allowance made for the fact that a public transport system needs to be a network - rather than simply just a collection of unlinked end to end independent routes
Last edited by Milo Minderbinder; 8th Apr 2012 at 14:32.
The problem is that at no point during the Beeching closures was any allowance made for the fact that a public transport system needs to be a network - rather than simply just a collection of unlinked end to end independent routes.
On a different thought, to an extent you can blame Maggie and the Tories as well. Her breakup and denationalisation of the bus and rail companies totally destroyed any attempt at rejoining the network. Take Lancashire as an example. In 1979 Lancs County Council imposed a universal integrated ticketing system on all bus and rail routes in the county. You cold get a return train ticket from (for example) Blackpool and Blackburn and return by any combination of bus/train. All tickets were universally acceptable and through ticketing across all operators was compulsory. if the company didn't agree, they were banned from operating. Thatcher's bus deregulation in the early 1980's destroyed that. Instead we ended up with each company involved in uncontrolled competition, often with old unsafe ancient buses. In Lancashire it took two fatalities - one in Lancaster, one in Preston - of people killed by racing buises before the companies began to see sense. And my point - basically any plans that were in place to build centralised transport nodes were blanked by the imposition of the effects of naked raging capitalism at its worst.
Of course, one event by one government 30 years ago has managed to completely undo several hundred years of infrastructure development before and after.
I bet if I hated Bliar as much as some people hate Maggie I could make out it was all his fault.
(Actually I probably hate him more, but I'm not going to blame him for the few things that weren't his fault)
I make no such claim I merely make the point that the Tories transport deregulation made impossible any attempt at fixing what was already a broken system (see my earlier post). I've nothing against capitalism and privatisation per se, but in the case of public transport it was totally counterproductive.
Our local (Figueras) town had the bus and railway stations alongside each other. You could arrive on a train from Paris and walk five minutes to catch a bus.
So when the idiots who plan such things decided where to build the new TGV station, they put it 5kms away, thus requiring a shuttle bus service from new to old railway station + bus station, and adding half an hour to a journey.
This is called, I believe "progress" although most of us can describe it with several succint four-letter words.
Further evidence that mankind's intellect is not evolving.
It is somewhat interesting that some of the Beeching railway closures were dependent on there being replacement 'bus services. When, for various reasons, the 'bus services have subsequently disappeared, it's all been very quiet about any replacement of any sort....
It is more than regrettable that Thatcher's privatisation of the railways was so badly done. She gets the blame, but I have no doubt that the ideas came from economists and get-rich-quick spivs with no real ideas about a proper integrated transport system providing a service. If it had to be privatised (and it could well have been reformed without privatisation) they should have gone to four companies or perhaps five with Scotland being all one on its own. Not the itty-bitty mess that we have now.
Too many of the Beeching-era replacement bus services didn't make sense. They tried to replicate the rail service by the closest possible route passing all stations, which meant they tended to wander down slow country backroads meadering pointlessly and giving very slow journey times. The direct rail route was often not paralleled by a direct road.
If instead they had tried to provide new services linking the villages to the towns by the most direct route, then more may have survived. In planning the replacement routes the assumption was made that most train journeys had only been local for one or two stops, when in reality they had mainly been feeder services for long distance routes. The replacement buses, in trying to replicate the rail routes too accurately, were too slow to be useful. An example was the Yeovil - Taunton 200 service, which instead of following the logical direct route via Ilminster, instead meandered through the lanes of the Somerset Levels in attempting to reach every station and halt which would have been better served by other services on more direct roads
Last edited by Milo Minderbinder; 8th Apr 2012 at 16:12.
When I was breifly at Cov Poly: 30 odd years ago - I thought that the walk from the railway station to the old D Block was reasonable for anyone upto middle age - Has the walk way gone ?
The problem was often that land owning interests did not want the "New fangled railway" anywhere their land or sources of income - pulling down all their cash generating hovels would hit their pockets.
Coventry is an interesting case - Is the current railway there a remenant of the many attempts to link Brum and London. In cov's case I bet that they could relocate the Bus Station.
Cambridge may have some similarities in versted interests preventing a more central location for the (vastly overused) rail station. I bet it was the universiry colleges in Cambs case.
As for the guided bus - Don't start me off : At this point CATIII shouts out loud "Professional pilots rumour mill an avaition forum" - yes my paterinal Grandad was a plate layer.
When I was breifly at Cov Poly: 30 odd years ago - I thought that the walk from the railway station to the old D Block was reasonable for anyone upto middle age - Has the walk way gone ?
I'm not sure where the D block is and no doubt it has a new fangled name by now, but yes, you can walk from Cov station into the city centre shopping area and on to Cov Uni (as it now is), the Cathedral and bus station, mainly on pedestrianised precints. There has been a lot of digging up and relaying lately, much of it in the name of shared space, but as you say, the less said about that the better!
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Coventry is an interesting case - Is the current railway there a remenant of the many attempts to link Brum and London. In cov's case I bet that they could relocate the Bus Station.
By definition, most stations are situated somewhere on a line between a point A and a point B, only the major terminii are different in that respect. Railway lines have traditionally been build as straight as the local landowners will allow them, and Coventry is on a fairly straight axis between New Street and Rugby, which also allows for Birmingham International station, situated between the airport (ok now, back on topic?) and the NEC complex.
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PS is there still a rail service to Bedworth?. Was that a former Coal link?
Yes, there is an hourly single car service which calls at Bedworth on its way to/from Nuneaton. It has formerly been part of a through service going as far as Skegness, but that was severed with the WCML upgrades demanding fast running through Nuneaton. It is due to be upgraded to a three car service, afaik running on a 20 minute headway.
So when the idiots who plan such things decided where to build the new TGV station, they put it 5kms away, thus requiring a shuttle bus service from new to old railway station + bus station, and adding half an hour to a journey.
Well I'd rather have an AVE / HS station 5k away called "Coventry HS" than have to make do with Birmingham's secondary parkway station 15km away!
Integration of high speed rail is a whole different ball game - the easiest option as often favoured by the French is to skirt around the city edge and use a "parkway" station, the best and most expensive option is the bring the HS route through in a tunnel, including separate tracks for stopping and through running, but it is easy to see why they go for the latter more often.
Indeed jabird, but the justification for putting the TGV stations outside the city centre (Figueras) or running them deep underground into a new station (Girona) is that the new track has to be straight as the trains run so fast, strange logic this as whenever I'm getting off at a TGV station the train is running quite slowly, not to mention stopping !
Anyway, shouldn't complain, the authorities forgot to plan for ANY stations on the new track from the French border down to Barcelona, we are now three years behind schedule and the stations mentioned above are both provisional buildings (i.e. large portacabins) and the line not open past Figueras.
I dearly love my country of adoption but now and then wonder at the occasional complete lack of planning......
the new track has to be straight as the trains run so fast, strange logic this as whenever I'm getting off at a TGV station the train is running quite slowly, not to mention stopping !
Well, er, not all TGV trains stop at all TGV stations.
D Block as the former Physics block at the old Poly site at the corner of Cox St & Gosford St, its been recladded. I should have looked at Google. (The ring road does seem to isolate the city centre by the look of it). As per Brum.
To the point though, and is that "Out of town shopping" has decimated the centres of cities - I cannot speak for Coventry as its had a lot of developement and is still a tourist attraction.
And therefore perhaps has developed its centre.
As others have said we don't seem to have grasped the idea of an integrated transport city wise transport system say like Karlsruhe, pop approx 294K not too disimilar to Coventry.
What we are looking at here is a failure of Urban planning in the UK since the 1960's.
