On Wed, 23 Aug 2006 20:27:28 +0100, Dave Arquati
wrote:

Peter Frimberley wrote:

Very odd, considering they built that bus layover area at Shepherds
Bush tube station in about two weeks, you would think they could do
something similarly quick and low budget at Hammersmith, much the
same, with the addition of a few bus shelters. Maybe they worked out
how much it would cost to modify the traffic lights, or some other HSE
reason meant it would be stupidly expensive to do, so they gave up.

I didn't realise that the bus layover was put in place so quickly!
Incidentally, where did buses lay over before it was there?

End of Caxton Road. You can just see the buses on this old aerial
photo here
http://local.live.com/default.aspx?v...style=h&lvl=18
(or try http://tinyurl.com/ej8dl )

I should imagine the residents are delighted that it's been moved from
there already!


I hope the new bus station on that site comes along similarly rapidly...
they've held off putting in bus shelters in for the neighbouring stops
on Uxbridge Road for quite a while, except for the closest one to the
station.

They should have left the original bus station that was right there
until what, 10 or 12 years ago?

Before my arrival in London, I'm afraid. However, I imagine that the
current bus station was, at that time, intended to be a complete
replacement, so retaining the original would have been a waste of
maintenance costs... it's probably only more recently that bus services
have expanded enough to warrant the extension.

The original was little more than an extra lane on the gyratory for
buses to pull into, with 5 or 6 "corrugated iron" simple shelters on
the island between the road the buses drove down, and the gyratory
road that all the traffic uses today. It was entered right on the
north east corner of the gyratory and exited back on to the gyratory
where the layby into the Disney building is now. It was like that from
at least the mid 70s, maybe earlier. I'm not sure but I think you
could walk straight into the tube station from there - you definitely
could while they were building the current tube station and bus
station, and had a series of portacabins as the station entrance. But
yes, I imagine the new Broadway Centre bus station was sized so as to
make the old bus station completely redundant, hence it's removal.
It's just ironic that the old bus station was exactly where this
temporary extension was supposed to be, and that the old and temporary
would have been so similar (i.e. a collection of ramshackle bus
shelters rather than a proper bus station building).

I think the Broadway Centre bus station was always meant to expand
though, or at least the shopping centre was, judging from the big
passageway they put in next to the McDonalds that doesn't go anywhere
at present.

Yes if you find out more, please post it here!