There's an awful lot to be said on this subject, and I'm afraid I
can't really cover it adequately in this format.  Local circumstances
vary enormously - one of the mistakes often made by planners is to
assume that what works in one place can be transported elsewhere.

One or two points though - 

Chatham "The Pentagon" (Medway, UK) is another example of a grade
separated bus station - in this case circulating round the first floor
of a shopping centre.  It is pretty awful now, and is likely to be
replaced.  One of the chief problems is that very little of the bus
station gets natural light - another is that when the shopping centre
is closed in the evening, pedestrian access is difficult and there are
too few people around for perceived safety.

Anzir's very useful summary did strike me as dated wrt Birmingham - it
seems to describe the situation when I was a schoolboy there around
1960!  Though that system did persist for a good while.

Now, Birmingham has the infamous "Bus Mall".  Certainly when I saw it
in operation last February it was disastrous, with wall-to-wall bus
jams in the mall itself and in Corporation Street - Brum's premier
shopping street.  I claim no expertise wrt B'ham, but it seems to me
an excellent example of what goes wrong when insufficient
consideration is given to bus movements.  There are, of course, no bus
stations in central Birmingham, unlike all other large cities I know
(what about Liverpool though?).  There are accordingly far too many
buses chasing far too little road space.  I think things may have
improved since my visit - but probably not much.

Brighton, on the other hand, is an excellent example of good provision
for bus passengers without a bus station - but it's a lot smaller than
B'ham, and has a LOT of CBD bus priority.

We (Buchanans) have looked at the bus / city centre / pedestrian issue
quite a bit in recent studies.  One interesting possible solution is
"Dynamic Bay Allocation" in bus stations, where bay allocation is done
in real time, so a single bay (stand, stance) can handle 15-30 buses
per hour instead of 6-12 which is the UK norm.  No examples of these
in UK as yet, but lots in the Netherlands, NZ and Aus. - see
http://www.connexionz.co.nz/pdf/ConnexionzSystemOverview.pdf and other
stuff on the same site.

What this type of system can do is to minimise the space taken up by
the bus / passenger interface in locations where space is scarce - but
in most cases a "bus holding area" of some sort is necessary not too
far away.

If anyone is seriously interested, I have a substantial (if patchy)
photo collection of the good, the bad and the ugly wrt bus stations
and town centre bus facilities.

Cheers, Alan

On Fri, 31 Dec 2004 16:50:30 +0000, "N. J. Worthington"
<[log in to unmask]> wrote to [log in to unmask]:

>Anzir Boodoo wrote:
>>
>> (forwarded back to the list, as delivery to [log in to unmask] failed)
>>
>> > On Friday, Dec 17, 2004, at 08:38 Europe/London, Hongwei Li wrote:
>> >> I need some examples about bus station design and traffic management
>> >
>> > Sorry for the delay... I think there are two main types of bus station
>> > design which fully separate buses and pedestrians. One is the Drive In
>> > Reverse Out (DIRO) type, favoured by Metro, which you will see all
>> > over West Yorkshire.
>> > The second is the grade separated type
>
>There is a third, which is essentially a Drive In Drive Out arrangement.
>I know it as the "shallow saw-tooth" design. The bus drives alongside
>the stand, at a shallow angle to the bus station, and is able to pull
>away again without reversing. This design is standard around Greater
>Manchester, for example. It is however relatively land hungry, which may
>explain why the more traditional DIRO type was chosen for the new bus
>and coach station at Manchester Airport.
>
>Another consequence of this design is that passengers can feel very
>isolated at night, with few or no other people at their stand or at
>adjoining stands. For this reason, Greater Manchester PTE has adopted a
>policy of concentrating all evening departures on a small number of
>stands. Buses use one stand up to 1900 and another stand afterwards.
>Sometimes this can be confusing, as either passengers or drivers forget
>which stand they're supposed to be using.  :-(
>
>Grade separated bus stations seem to be out of favour now, if indeed
>they were ever in favour. The Great British Public prefers level access
>and will walk across bus lanes to reach their stand, however many
>staircases or escalators or lifts are provided. Warrington bus station
>is a typical example, and is soon to be replaced by a new design.
>
>Runcorn also has a grade separated bus station. It seems to work rather
>better, but mainly because the only place you would want to walk to is
>the adjacent shopping centre, accessed via escalators.
>
>Whatever design you choose, make sure it's flexible enough to cope with
>different types of bus - short wheelbase, long wheelbase, articulated,
>single deck, double deck, low platform entry, high platform entry etc.
>
>And think through the allocation of routes to stands very carefully. You
>may want to concentrate all the routes that serve a particular corridor
>on one stand, for the convenience of passengers; but this could lead to
>congestion and delays as buses queue to reach that one stand.
>And you may want to concentrate arrivals and departures at specific
>times, to make interchange easy - also leading to congestion.
>
>BTW, Lancashire County Council has just won an award for the design of
>the new Chorley Interchange, so perhaps there are some lessons to be
>learned there. See
><http://www.bus-industry-awards.com/project_briefs_infra.htm> and
><http://www.lancashire.gov.uk/environment/bus/chorley_interchange/chorley.asp>.

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Alan Howes
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Colin Buchanan and Partners

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