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Bus station to close at Easter
Friday 19th March 2010, 11:30AM GMT.
Wolverhampton’s bus station will close from Easter weekend as work gets under way on its £22.5m replacement, it was revealed today.
Eighteen months of work on the long- awaited bus station will begin after the Easter break.The current Pipers Row bus station closes at the end of business on Easter Saturday, April 3.
Passengers will have to use temporary stops in the city centre from Easter Sunday to make way for the redevelopment.
Bus stops and shelters are being installed on Queen Street, Pipers Row, Stafford Street, Tower Street, Princess Street and Darlington Street to provide drop off and pick up points for the bus and coach services that normally use the bus station.
A bus filter lane is to be created on Ring Road St David’s between the Chubb buildings and the wishbone bridge island at the top of Bilston Street.
Drivers will face three months of hold-ups when work starts to remodel the dual carriageway.
Trees on the central reservation have already been chopped down to allow the work to start. Work was meant to begin as early as last November but has been held up after the council and transport authority Centro were locked in legal negotiations over the transfer of the Queen’s Building and Pipers Row House.
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This is fantastic news for publictransport users in Wolverhampton. With a new state of the art bus station and a transport interlink on it’s way, the council are showing a real commitment to the residents of this city.
In addition, by creating the new filter lane from the ring road, this will reduce the congestion within the city centre. Making it a safer and nicer place for people to come to do their shopping which in turn, will lead to more of the vacant shops becoming occupied.
It will also make the Summer Row developement more attractive to potential investors.
What I really would like to know is why the Labour Party never pushed forwards with projects like this during their adminstration. If more people are using the city centre, this will create more jobs in Wolverhampton. Yet they never gave it a chance!
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I find it hard to believe the this project is going to welcome visitors to the city and attract new traders to vacant shops. As previously mentioned the Bus Companies need to incent people by lowering the cost of transport
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I recently visited the West Midlands and i really think your buses are excellent value for money,down here in luton we have to pay £3.70p for a day saver and this doesnt get us hardly anywhere…to go from wolverhampton to coventry for £3.30 that is excellant value for money….and the new bus station will bring more visitors to the area.
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State of the art bus station??? Please explain!
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And will it make any difference to journey times????
No!!!!
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Honestly, engage your brain before you moan. The scheme had absolutely nothing to do with journey times. What a pointless thing to say. If centro walked on water you’d say its because they couldn’t swim
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Whats the point of building a new bus station if it isn’t going to have any difference on Journey times etc? All it is doing is wasting money where a lick of paint would have done the job!!!
I still will not be using the buses.
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Absolutely spot on Lord Crocker and Rob H.
Within 6 months the place will be spray painted and urine smells coming from various corners. No one will be using it in the evening in case they get mugged. The problem, as always, is that no money is ever spent on security to keep the pond life away.
Its safer by car.
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So true, security is a MUST if people are to feel safe in the new station, and security who are fit enough to deal with any trouble, not guards who can just about walk!!
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Very interesting. As usual the wrong solution and for a very simple reason: planned by outsiders with no local knowledge!
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Centro and the other local bodies who have financed and planned this seem very local to me.
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Centro isn’t “very local” at all – it’s a Brummie body that thinks Wolverhampton is just a suburb of Birmingham instead of the nationally economically important city it is.
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I didn’t get why Wednesbury and Brom seemed to get brand spanking new stations before Wolvo anyway. This will be fantastic, and hell even if it doesn’t help loading times it will just be nicer going to/from work every day. A fantastic change to the city and really what it needs to kick off other projects, it’s the first thing anyone sees, even have to walk past it from the train station.
Now we just need to get banga to replace their buses with the new arriva type that the 890′s use haha! And get NX to get rid of their old fleet. They’ve done good work getting the metrobuses off the roads at least.
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Replacing West Bromwich and Wednesbury bus stations before Wolverhampton is easily justifiable:
The previous West Bromwich Bus Station was like the metal bus shelters we used to have all over the Centro area, only joined up to form one long shelter per-isle. Go to the soon to be replaced Stourbridge bus station to find-out how much worse West Bromwich was than Wolverhampton is now.
Double that for the previous Wednesbury Bus Station with separate shelters for each stand and crash-barrier-type railings in-between. It was quaint and charming. It was also drafty and, in the overspill outside each shelter, exposed! Whilst I’m still sorry at the loss of the interesting and original 1950s Dudley Street Motors building, I’m far from sorry about the air-conditioned, closed-off (by electric doors), comfort of the current Wednesbury Bus Station which was inspired by the current West Bromwich’s successful design!
As far as I can tell, W.M.P.T.E. / Centro / Network West Midlands has a fair policy of trying to renew their oldest bus stations first.
In its original form, the current Dudley Bus Station (like Wolverhampton, now also due for replacement) was one of, if not, the first of the new-generation bus stations in 1984. Wolverhampton’s was along similar lines and completed in 1986. As early as the end of the same decade, the aforementioned previous bus stations at West Bromwich and Wednesbury (of 1960s/1970s vintage) were becoming decrepit. Replacement was well overdue by the time it happened around the turn of the century.
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>> What I really would like to know is why the Labour Party never pushed forwards with projects like this during their adminstration.
I’m not one for political rivalry or anything, however, you’re forgetting it’s “the labour administration” who revamped the bus station last time around, and “the labour administration” who redid the dismal and horrid Wulfrun centre into a nice, clean, shopping centre. And who created the Midland Metro, and so on. Ranting on about “oh god the labour administration-!” as if everything bad is their fault is as silly as saying everything good comes from the tories :p
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shouldnt the vacant shops get filled first and summer row work finished and trading before the bus station,
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Which came first, the chicken or the egg?
Depends whether you believe that ‘if you build it they will come’.
Wolverhampton needs good public transport to move people into the city. This bus station goes some way to doing that and improving the overall image of the city.
As to whether it will fill the vacant shops and make Summer Row happen….no it won’t, but it will certainly help.
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Is Neil Macleod standing for election ? He seems to be a rampant Tory blogger with attitude !
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Wikipedia has Neil Macleod down as Conservative candidate for the Oxley Ward in this year’s Wolverhampton Council election.
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Good! glad to hear it, he makes a lot of sense.
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His post is an ill-disguised Tory broadcast. I wish he would just make it clear who he supports and then make his point.
Or better still, just make his point and let us make up our own minds.
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so know we know, ha.
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Does anyone know where the 559 will go from? The only reason I ever have to go to Wolverhampton is for the eye hospital, so I basically only know the bus station. And frankly I have trouble even with that, as I have my pupils dilated at the hospital and I’m half-blind after that. So I reckon I’ll spend half the day completely lost!
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Hi, the 559 will go from stand AD on Stafford Street from 04 April when the bus station closes.
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I do not go to Wolves eye hospital. Have to go somewhere else for my care as they lack staff who deal with my eye problems.
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Darkmavis
I think you really should get a taxi – you sound like a danger to yourself and all those around you.
Take care
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jonny dukes, i think darkmavis is one flew over the cuckoo,s nest dont you.
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Congratulations about time!
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Replacing West Bromwich and Wednesbury bus stations before Wolverhampton is easily justifiable:
The previous West Bromwich Bus Station was like the metal bus shelters we used to have all over the Centro area, only joined up to form one long shelter per-isle. Go to the soon to be replaced Stourbridge bus station to find-out how much worse West Bromwich was than Wolverhampton is now.
Double that for the previous Wednesbury Bus Station with separate shelters for each stand and crash-barrier-type railings in-between. It was quaint and charming. It was also drafty and, in the overspill outside each shelter, exposed! Whilst I’m still sorry at the loss of the interesting and original 1950s Dudley Street Motors building, I’m far from sorry about the air-conditioned, closed-off (by electric doors), comfort of the current Wednesbury Bus Station which was inspired by the current West Bromwich’s successful design!
As far as I can tell, W.M.P.T.E. / Centro / Network West Midlands has a fair policy of trying to renew their oldest bus stations first.
In its original form, the current Dudley Bus Station (like Wolverhampton, now also due for replacement) was one of, if not, the first of the new-generation bus stations in 1984. Wolverhampton’s was along similar lines and completed in 1986. As early as the end of the same decade, the aforementioned previous bus stations at West Bromwich and Wednesbury (of 1960s/1970s vintage) were becoming decrepit. Replacement was well overdue by the time it happened around the turn of the century.
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Please note that the above is a reply to Dan’s comment (4).
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I work in the transport network in wolverhampton any investment in the updating of a tired bus station is a good thing,and as for lowering the prices instead of building a new station is rubbish.if the small amount of passangers who vandalise and refuse to pay payed our prices could be lowered.national express has one of the lowest pricings in the country.im only a small cog in the wheel,in 18 months wolverhampton will have a new station and hopefully more investment will carry on
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I just visited Wolverhampton for the first time in 4 years. Just wondering how a new bus station will improve the city? The old one seems fine and is hardly ancient. Surely the money could be better spent.
PS. I never got to see the new Queen Square Fountain in action, does it not function in the winter?
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Canada Wolves, no disrespect but I’d recommend you spend more time in Wolverhampton before you draw your conclusions. This uninviting station station is well-known for it’s problems with anti-social behaviour, and violent crime..I’ve seen it myself on many occasions. I also think this redevelopment is only being done because it’s an election year..
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to Canada
re p.s…….someone realised that water freezes at low temperatures !!!! so they switch it off !!!!
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If only Wolverhampton could have a 100% revamp the city would be nicer place to work in, nicer to visit and would then be able to keep out of travel magazines and the like for being one of the worst cities in the UK.
Wolverhampton has never been the most popular of places anyway but in the days of the old Central Arcade etc it certainly had more character than it has now, was cleaner and more friendly in its appeal.
Still compared to other cities and towns, it could be worse I suppose but then again who cares about other places, Wolverhampton is the one that really matters and hopefully once both rail and bus stations are completed, other schemes to improve the city will be implemented – it will certainly be about time!
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This wil be the second revamp of the nus staion in the past 2 decades. Before that nothing happened at all really…
This show’s a commitment to the city which should be welcomed.
And just for the record the only time much has happened in Wolves has been under a Labour government. ( Gaining City status, extension of the Art Gallery,increased funding for New Cross Hospital…)
( BTW I am not a Lab supporter ! )
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