Wayfinding In Preston
Preston didn’t offer much in the way of information to help walkers. Typical was this finger post and map.
Signposts and Maps In Preston
It’s not even as good as it looks, as some of the fingers weren’t pointing in the right direction.
Preston Covered Market
The covered market in Preston is a Grade 2 Listed building.
It was large and busy, but most of the goods on offer didn’t interest me at all. Like the bus station is this another albatross around Preston’s neck?
Preston Bus Station
Preston Bus Station is a classic 1960s building in a brutalist style. I decided to visit, when I heard about the rows raging around the building as I discussed here.
The council has a problem in that the building needs a lot of repairs and have proposed its demolition. But there is a heritage lobby opposed to this and so the row is set to continue. The building has now been given a Grade 2 listing.
I quite liked the building and it does seem to my untutored eye that it does need a bit of work to be done.
But you can’t help but think that the building has problems that refurbishment won’t solve.
If you take the best train-bus interfaces in the country like Barnsley, Canning Town and now Kings Cross, the bus station at Preston is not in the right place for those arriving in the city by train. It’s akin to expecting passengers arriving at Kings Cross to walk to Euston to get a bus. They wouldn’t and I suspect in Preston they don’t!
So I come to the reluctant conclusion, that the bus station should be knocked down, despite the fact I like the building a lot.
The only way to save it, would be to create an innovative solution perhaps using a free bus that connects the rail and bus stations via the main shopping street.
But I suspect that has been looked at and discarded.
Incidentally, I wasn’t the only visitor interested in the bus station. There were perhaps three others photographing the building.
Buses In Preston
I arrived in Preston and found this information board and bus stop map at the station.
Bus Information In Preston
But it was a start and is so much better than you get in many places.
However, the stop I needed to use to get to the bus station is on the other side of a busy road. How’s that for joined up thinking?
The Bus Stop At Preston Station
So it had a seat and a litter bin, but the light controlled crossing was some distance away. Why wasn’t the stop for the bus to the bus station actually inside the entrance to the station? The whole station entrance road seemed to be full of taxis waiting for not many passengers in the middle of the morning
Getting on the bus was the usual palaver of taking your ticket out putting it flat on the machine and then being issued with a pointless ticket. Why do bus companies outside London not have a touch and go system that recognises free bus passes, like London does? Or even one, that allows you to show your ticket to the driver, as you do in London with a British Rail ticket with an added London Travelcard?
The bus was one of those single entry/exit types and I was the only passenger, although a lot had got out at the station.
All Alone Am I
How does a driver organise someone getting out in a wheelchair, at the same time as someone with twins in a double buggy gets in, on these outdated single door buses? It always puzzles me, that new buses as this one undoubtedly was, are still built this way!
But at least it got me to the bus station!
The Anonymous Widower 