Great Western Coffee Shop

Anyone who has been to Gloucester would know the unwelcoming start to your trip as you see the tatty bus station to your right and surrounding buildings.

Many of you would know that a new bus station transport hub is being built to replace the aging current one.

On Thursday,guests were invited to visit it and see the progress due to open at the end of this month (photos attached). It sees a welcome from the train station (to trick people around the corner   ;)

Sees opening on 28th October, PIS, toilets and a travel office all inside as well.

https://twitter.com/robellis82/status/1045597156890091520?s=21
https://twitter.com/richardgrahamuk/status/1045952804299440129?s=21

That's TODAY ...

Preview from yesterday:

https://www.facebook.com/john.scragg1/posts/10155948487393063

Walking home from the train station it is very nice and I did look inside yesterday. Don’t be fooled though, walk around the corner and it’s a dump  :D

For a bus station, photographed on a grey day, I doesn't look too bad to me.

There was a lovely typo in the Gloucester Citizen that said 120 people could be seared in the new transport Hub. Could have done with some fires under the seats yesterday on the  freezing cold open day. About 20 vintage  buses on display.The stars being the ' magnificently restored in red and black, 'dorsal finned' Bevan Bros KDD 38, AEC REGAL 3 from the Soudley valley, plus the brand new 99 Mercedes Benz Citaro double decker service operated by Pulhams between the Gloucester and Cheltenham hospitals.

It does look rather snazzy, but I fear my opinion of bus travel generally and Gloucester in particular has been cast by too many hours waiting there in the 80s and 90s. Gloucester on the whole is becoming a much nicer place though.

A report to me yesterday that there isn't a train departure display at the Gloucester Transport Hub - even though it's known as a transport hub and not a bus station, and the trains are just a couple of minutes walk away. Surely that lack of information can't be the case in a modern transport facility, can it?

I'm also given to understand that the local buses still use a stop in "Clarence Street" - about a hundred yards from the Transport Hub - and there is no interactive display of any sort there - just paper / printed timetables, so no indication of late or cancelled buses which would be useful for the (apparently lots) of people who use that service, and if they know of a problem could take an alternative rather than being left uninformed.

Reports from someone who knows quite a bit about transport, but not personally checked; there could be explanations like "coming but not yet commissioned" or "there is an interactive train display on the underside of the baby changing shelf in the disabled loo".

I visit Gloucester a few times each year, so am looking forward to seeing this hub open.

On Graham's point about interactive displays, I was in Bournemouth last week and was impressed with the display they have at their bus terminus (which is just on a street, not in a dedicated bus station), which was giving up to date information every few seconds.

Beneath a sign "Beware of the leopard."

It does sound a bit as if "transport hub" is to "bus station" as "metrobus" is to "bus" (ie fancy name for the same thing).

Yes: It looks nice, but it's a bus station. A transport hub wouldn't have a dual carriageway running through the middle.

If it looks like a bus station, sounds like a bus station and smells like a bus station - then it is a bus station !

Apart from which, isn't "hub" a bit passé now ? Shouldn't it be a "campus" in today's buzz-speak ?

It’s just the old bus station rebuilt. It should have been big enough to accommodate the local services but hey ho.