Gloucester Transport Hub (also known as Gloucester Bus Station) is a

bus station A bus station, bus depot, or bus interchange is a structure where city buses or intercity buses stop to pick up and drop off passengers. A bus station is larger than a bus stop, which is usually simply a place on the roadside, where buses can st ...

on Station Road in

Gloucester Gloucester ( ) is a cathedral city, non-metropolitan district and the county town of Gloucestershire in the South West England, South West of England. Gloucester lies on the River Severn, between the Cotswolds to the east and the Forest of Dean ...

, England.

History

Until 1933, the main form of public transport in Gloucester was the

tram A tram (also known as a streetcar or trolley in Canada and the United States) is an urban rail transit in which Rolling stock, vehicles, whether individual railcars or multiple-unit trains, run on tramway tracks on urban public streets; some ...

. In 1935, after the closure of the tramlines.

Gloucester City Council Gloucester City Council is the local authority for the city of Gloucester, in Gloucestershire, England. Gloucester has had a council since medieval times, which has been reformed on numerous occasions. Since 1974 Gloucester has been a non-metropo ...

partnered with the Bristol Omnibus Company in leasing out its bus services. At this point in time, there was no bus station in the city. However, the old tram depot on London Road was enlarged and used as a bus depot and is today used by Stagecoach West. The original bus station, which had 11 bays, opened in 1962, on the former cattle market site which is now part of Kings Square. This greatly increased the popularity of the shopping area around Northgate Street and Eastgate Street. Also, at this time, a new inner ring road through the city was built, with the first part being Bruton Way, which runs East of the bus station. In 2012, Gloucester City Council agreed a deal with Stanhope to revamp the Kings Quarter area. This project was planned to cost £60 million with GFirst LEP providing a budget of £3 million to build a new transport hub to replace the old bus station. At this time, an eight week

archaeological Archaeology or archeology is the study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of Artifact (archaeology), artifacts, architecture, biofact (archaeology), biofacts or ecofacts, ...

project took place to investigate the area around the bus station, before any major development work was undertaken. A Roman flood bank was found under the station from this project. In May and June 2016, the old bus station was demolished in preparation for the new one, which now had a budget of £7.5 million with £6.4 million of that coming from the government through GFirst LEP. Part of Grosvenor House was also demolished and several businesses, including the Furniture Recycling Project, had to leave the site. The original plans for the new

transport hub A transport hub is a place where passengers and cargo are exchanged between vehicles and/or between mode of transport, transport modes. Public transport hubs include train station, railway stations, metro station, rapid transit stations, bus ...

included having a glass front to the northwest side. However, in July 2017 the city council submitted a planning application for a smaller building than originally designed, with the northwest side being external render instead of glass. Additionally, the plans to demolish Bentinck House were put on hold. The proposed reason for these changes was due to a sewer being in an unexpected place and to provide greater flexibility for future development. Along with the building plans, changes to the road layout around Station Road and Bruton Way were made, to make the new transport hub more accessible. Construction of the new transport hub was started in August 2017 and carried out by Kier Construction, and it opened to the public on 27 October 2018. It has 12 bus bays, a staffed ticket office, electronic timetable displays, a cafe, shop and toilets. It also has solar panels to power the internal lighting and features a stained glass window designed by Thomas Denny costing £100,000. As of November 2019, the stained glass window has not yet been installed and Thomas Denny is no longer involved with the project.

Facilities

The bus station was built with a shop and cafe. By 2023, these were both vacant. Both now exist again, the cafe with quite an extensive menu.

Other Termini

Several other local bus services also terminate in adjacent Clarence Street, with another one (12) terminating round the corner from Clarence Street, in Eastgate Street.

References

{{Transport in Gloucestershire Buildings and structures in Gloucester Transport in Gloucester Bus stations in Gloucestershire Transport infrastructure completed in 1962 Transport infrastructure completed in 2018