Preston bus station

Preston Bus Station is the central bus terminus in the English city of Preston in Lancashire.

Design

Built in 1968 and 1969 with a capacity for 80 double-decker buses and designed by Keith Ingham (designer) and Charles Wilson of Building Design Partnership with E H Stazicker, it is the second largest bus station in Western Europe.Fact|date=February 2007 Pedestrian access to the Bus Station is through any of three subways while the design also incorporates a multi-storey car park of five floors with space for 1100 cars.

The building's engineers, Ove Arup and Partners, designed the distinctive curve of the car park balconies "after acceptable finishes to a vertical wall proved too expensive, contributing to the organic, sculptural nature of the building. The edges are functional, too, in that they protect car bumpers from crashing against a vertical wall. The cover balustrade protects passengers from the weather by allowing buses to penetrate beneath the lower parking floor." [cite web |url=http://groups.msn.com/TheSavePrestonBusStationCampaign/heritagenote2.msnw |title=Keith Ingham for Building Design Partnership. Ove Arup and Partners, Structural Engineers. 1967 |accessdate=2007-01-31 |format=html]

Threatened demolition

The building is threatened with demolition as part of the City Council's Tithebarn redevelopment project. In 2000, opposition to the demolition led to an application for listed building status by English Heritage. Preston Borough Council (as it then was) opposed the application.

Putting forward the case for a smaller terminus, a report, commissioned by the council and Grosvenor in 2000, stated that "buses arriving and leaving the bus station have very low bus occupancy rates indicating that passengers alight and board elsewhere in the town centre. The bus station car park similarly suffers from the poor pedestrian linkages." [cite web |url=http://www.preston.gov.uk/Documents/General/Public%20Relations/summary.pdf |title=Preston Town Centre Analysis Précis document |accessdate=2007-01-31 |format=pdf] Listing was subsequently rejected. [cite web |url=http://groups.msn.com/TheSavePrestonBusStationCampaign/listingdecision.msnw |title=Department of Culture, Media and Sport: Minister's Decision on Central Bus Station and Car Park, Preston |accessdate=2007-01-31 |format=html |work=The Save Preston Bus Station Campaign ]

On October 11, 2005, Preston City Council and developer Grosvenor Holdings signed an agreement to go ahead with the Tithebarn redevelopment project, which calls for the demolition of the current bus station despite it being an excellent example of 1960s brutalist architecture

External links

* http://www.michaelmackenzie.co.uk - Series titled last bus - New images of Preston bus station
* [http://www.flickr.com/photos/istirland/sets/72157594182084795/ Preston Bus Station in pictures]
* [http://www.leegarlandphotography.co.uk/series/prestonbus/index.htm Lee Garland Photography shots of Preston Bus Station, Sept 07]

Notes