Stockport’s £1 billion makeover

Thursday 28th March 2024

Stockport’s impressive new Interchange opened for business on Sunday last week (17th March). It’s cost a cool £140 million and forms part of a £1 billion regeneration makeover of the town centre.

The so called ‘north/south divide’ and need for ‘levelling up’, both never far from a politician’s sound bite these days, usually mean giving the north something the south already enjoys but when it comes to bus stations you’re lucky to get a decent few bus stops at the side of a road in many southern counties yet in northern England the size of a bus station is a mark of civic pride. Stockport’s huge new edifice is just the latest such exemplar of the species.

It’s not just a bus station, oops sorry, I mean ‘interchange’ either. Thanks to the opportunities presented by the huge topographical variations in the area a new public space-come-park has been created around the roof of the interchange accessible from alongside the A6 Wellington Road which passes over the eastern end of the new bus station and exit from the bus parking area as can be seen when you pass over the area on the railway viaduct from where I took the photograph below.

Here’s how Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council excitedly announced the completion of the project…

The rooftop park includes seating and play areas for children as well as a cycle path which looks to me to be an open invitation to become a racing circuit around the perimeter.

When I visited last Saturday morning, community celebrations were in full swing…

… all around the new rooftop park…

… which circles around the Interchange – stadium style – giving literally a birds eye view of the activities taking place far below from every angle as buses come and go.

Access down to the passenger concourse and departure stands from the rooftop park is via two lifts (one at either end of the ‘park’)…

… or a long staircase.

I didn’t count the number of steps but it’s quite a formidable climb back up and little surprise the lifts were proving very popular.

Down at deep ground floor level there are two other pedestrian entrances/exits at either end of the concourse. This one at the western end…

…and this one at the eastern end which passes under the A6 Wellington Road…

and another one on the north side where finishing works are still in progress.

The Interchange has 18 stands and a reported capacity of 164 departures an hour. Stand S outside the western exit in Swaine Street seemingly acts as a setting down point…

… although I wasn’t completely sure about that as it seemed very over subscribed with five routes (309/10, 312, 313, 370) also passing through and picking up which saved them going into the main parking area.

At the other (eastern) end of the concourse just after the A6 passes over you’ll find the exit for buses from the parking area…

… and another stand, Stand P, for buses departing on routes 378/A and 379.

A new taxi rank has been installed here.

Inside the concourse there’s plenty of room for passengers to circulate.

Each departure stand on the main concourse has six seats as well as three sets of perches for two…

… and a monitor showing the departures above the exit to the bus stand.

There’s a listing to show where each route (in numerical order) goes and its departure stand…

…and a list of destinations served (in alphabetical order) with route numbers and departure stand…

… and on the reverse of these displays a list of timed departures from the stand.

There’s an information window for the “Bus Station Office” (note: not an Interchange Office)…

…as well as a separate window from where tickets are sold.

A leaflet showing which departure stand each bus leaves from was available to pick up.

No retail units are yet open…

… but there are plans for a coffee shop which I’m sure will be welcomed.

The most frustrating aspect is of course the toilets, where in true Transport for Greater Manchester style it’s easier to access into a high security prison than someone desperate for a pee in Stockport.

You need 20p in cash to make the full height bars on the turnstile move to allow entry. No facility for card payments much to the annoyance of passengers I observed in just a few minutes as I passed by on Saturday. I had no cash on me either so can’t report on what the toilets are like.

I did attempt an interchange from the Interchange to the railway station which is at yet another level.

To try and make it easier than the previous arrangements and in keeping with the wider £1 billion makeover of the town centre, a new path for pedestrians and cyclists has been built…

… allowing passengers to avoid having to take the more convoluted route via the A6.

It took me seven minutes to climb the steep incline and reach the station and I noticed the new path isn’t yet signposted in the opposite direction explaining why I’d missed it on my arrival.

By coincidence the current issue of RAIL magazine includes a photograph of how the old bus station looked and this admirably demonstrates that when you have £1 billion to spend, splashing out £140 million on a new Interchange is well worth doing.

Roger French

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21 thoughts on “Stockport’s £1 billion makeover”

  1. I visited the Interchange on Monday evening arriving by Stagecoachs frequent 192 service. After crossing the road I asked a lady who was walking in the same direction is this the way to the new bus station, she said “yes it’s fabulous” and accompanied me to the lift. I asked if there were loos and she gave me directions and said they are lovely too.

    I’m used to exact fares and had 20p. When you go through the turnstile there is an option of male or female rooms. When exiting through the turnstiles I commented to the cleaner what a lovely workplace she has.

    The lady by now sitting waiting for her bus smiled and said “lovely isn’t it”. One excellent feature is the buses are set back so you can easily read the destinations.

    The travel centre was closed but I was able to pick up timetable leafets from the rack by the office that was manned.

    I climbed the stairs and exited by south entrance suitably impressed. Wow

    John Nicholas

    I used the facilities in Keswick Bus Station yesterday, well its a hedge behind the supermarket!

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    1. There are toilets within Booths Supermarket go in and turn left through the news and stationers section. No need to use a hedge.

      The overhang on Booths building also serves as a bus shelter and Stagecoach timetables are freely available.

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  2. From your photo, it looks as if the path linking the bus station to the rail station is just a revamping of the existing link. Going via the A6 was always the long way round. The old path had steps every now and again to reduce the gradient slightly, and it was still knackering going up it. Even though the new path looks like things could be pushed up now, I wouldn’t recommend it particularly!

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  3. For me, this “modern and attractive transport hub” is summed up by the full-height turnstiles at the entrance to the toilets. And the inability to pay the 20p by card, or even using (say) a £1 coin and getting change. But at least it accepts 5p coins!! One can only wonder how many 20p payments will be needed to cover the cost of the turnstile gear, and how much frustration, anger, and indeed discomfort will be caused by this setup.

    Matthew Spencer

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  4. Apart from the bizarre lack of card payment facilities for the toilets this looks really impressive. I’ve used the old bus station several times and it was hideous, as was the walk to the railway station, dodging the local drug addicts.

    Also good to see the comprehensive up-to-date bus information. TfL take note…

    Steve

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    1. I wonder if the local drug addicts are the reason for the full height turnstile access to the toilets.

      I think this new bus station looks amazing, who knows, perhaps visitors to the roof garden may even consider using buses when they notice the frequent arrivals and departures down below.

      Peter Brown

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  5. It’s still unfathomable why a new bus ‘interchange’ is so far away from the train station – especially as the necessary adjacent land recently became available but was used for unwanted office space.

    The lengthy uphill trek is not recommended for luggage carrying passengers.

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    1. Possibly because the railway station isn’t where most bus passengers want to go (i.e: Mersey Square Shopping Centre & the core town centre) so was not considered a better location as the station is south of the town centre. It may not seem like much but it is a bit of a hike and we have actually had some complaints from passengers since the opening of the Interchange due to the walk and steps involved in getting to/from the bus station from the town centre despite it being in the same site as the old one since they had got used to the closer temporary stops on the A6 & Mersey Square side of town (our routes didn’t go into the temporary bus station where the move would have been an improvement or at least no worse), I’m sure they will get used to it as it hasn’t practically moved but if the new site had been moved further away the complaints would be more vocal and fewer passenger would use the Interchange and would instead remain on roadside stops closer to the town centre.

      The unfortunate fact is that in the UK many (even most) major train stations aren’t actually located in the right place to be the focus for local public transport, being remote from the core retail and office areas that the majority of local passengers are aiming for so you are providing a worse service for most (both current & potential) to provide a better link for a minority in the hope that it may attract a few more.

      Dwarfer

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    2. Dwarfer is absolutely right. The vast, vast majority of passengers want to be in the centre of Stockport and part of the rationale for this project is to rejuvenate the town centre. 

      It’s one of the better designs I’ve seen, and it seems a decent facility (though I’ll fully reserve judgement til I visit) and appropriately sized… The ones at Wigan and Rochdale seem ridiculously indulgent for what was required but then again, that’s something evident in a few PTE areas.

      As Roger says, you get this sort of facility further north (even in the non-Metro areas – see Co Durham or Notts) but such are property values in the south, buses are relegated to some hovel (e.g. Guildford) or some dreadful non-facilities (e.g. Woking)

      BW2

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  6. Whenever I was in the old Stockport bus station I was impressed by the large number of stands and also of buses on the site. It would be interesting to know how many stands there were to cope with the 164 movements each hour compared with the 18 now provided.

    Ian McNeil

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      1. Thanks SM. I feel that to get 164 departures per hour from 18 stands, which is just over 9 per hour from each stand and allows an average of less than 7 minutes between departures from each stand, is optimistic when it must include boarding, collecting fares/checking passes/contactless payment, and reversing out, plus no doubt the odd driver change which can take quite a while in these days of electronic logging in.

        Ian McNeil

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    2. Re The Interchange has 18 stands and a reported capacity of 164 departures an hour.

      I too would like to know the theory behind this capacity.

      I use Newcastle Eldon Square bus station occasionally for the 685 and no way can you acheive the stand throughput of 9 buses per hour or 1 every 6.5 minutes. This stand has a bus every 10 minutes and is used by 4 routes. It take a minimum of 5 minutes to load each empty bus, the incoming bus having emptied at another stand elsewhere. The buses invariably do not arrive on stand at the correct intervals having come from destintations of Carlisle (1), Hexham (1), Middlesbrough (2) and Kingston Park area (2), road traffic having a big impact on timeliness not. So a bus every 10 minutes just about works although I reckon at least 1 or 2 buses each hour do not arrive or depart on time and clash with other arrivals/departures.

      What is the second row of bus bays for on each stand? Is this to allow baording of 2 buses at once? If so, how does that work? The yellow hatching is not wide enough and not buggy or wheelchair friendly, the big concrete wall at the head of each bay does not allow enough passenger/bugg/wheelchair access and there is no ramp at the curb for wheelchairs.

      A good idea if it to mark up parking space.

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  7. It’s not just Stockport but all the major bus stations in the GM area have the same set up for the toilets, done to keep out undesirables & anti social behaviour, but it’s daft they’re cash only, & won’t take contactless

    SM

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  9. In its 1973 Transport Plan, SELNEC PTE promised an escalator link between bus and rail stations. Now eventually 50 years later we have not quite got that but at least there is a lift for the greater part of the climb. However as Roger points out, they do seem to have forgotten about sign posting from the railway station. Annoyingly, signposting in the opposite direction uses the now common Americanism ‘Train Station’. The office blocks by the station seem to be all occupied, one of the occupiers being Stagecoach.

    Charging 20p for the toilets is good if it keeps them clean and clear of doubtful people who may wish to loiter there. But I agree it is a problem today when people do not always carry coins. I got caught out like this recently at Wigan Bus Station (yes it is Bus Station, not Interchange!), fortunately while I was contemplating my predicament the cleaners with their keys came along and took pity on me!

    Although it appears in some of Roger’s pictures, he does not mention the great block of flats in one corner – some of the cost is met through a deal with the developers obviously.

    Stand S is a bit of a puzzle, it looks as if using for departures was an afterthought; at the moment it does not have an electronic screen listing departures. Vehicles using it also have to go through the main bus station. Stands Q and R in the south-east corner are not mentioned on the direction signs on the main concourse, it simply says ‘coaches’ (indeed, I wonder if Roger discovered them as he does not mentioned them!). But they are used by High Peak 199 Buxton-Manchester Airport in both directions and 391/392/393 to Macclesfield (currently worked by Belle Vue). The sceptical might see a hidden agenda here – these are cross boundary services that will not become part of the Bee Network so perhaps they are being hidden away in a corner so as not to pollute the pure yellow of the Bee Network!

    One might query some of the stand allocations. 383/384 Marple Romiley circular in both directions both use stand K which seems potentially confusing. One would have thought that 383 should be with 358 (Marple, Hayfield) on stand J. This would also even out the number of departures. 382 also logically, uses K giving 7 departures per hour on this stand. The only other user of stand J is 375/385 giving only 2 departures per hour.

    Note contracts for franchising stage 3 have been awarded today https://news.tfgm.com/press-releases. Stagecoach have retained Stockport which gives continuity here.

    A. Henthorn Stott

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  10. I think the old bus station had two coach stands, one for NatEx and similar (not the High Peak out of area through services) and one for excursions/tours. If the stops around MerseyWay have been discontinued then this will have some inconvience – are the 192 “Shorts” still stopping on the main road going South ( some used to route into the old bus station to turn ). The number of stands in the old bus station two roadways of had been out of use for some time – being used for a mixture of storage I think of police vehicles and some of the small red and white livered buses that had been used for GM contract services and appeared surplus to normal requirements/ out of service when that company ceased trading.  Given the “inclinator” on the Elizabeth line in London one wonders if a pair of them from Edgeley railway station to the bus interchange could be funded (would that be leveling up ?). Stockport/Heaton at one time had a second railway station at the north end of the Viaduct , that was closed quite a good many years ago – and wasnt really connected any more to the present town centre. Of course Stockport’s historic town centre was further east around the Castle and the Parish Church and it was a mix of trams and the train stations that moved the shopping areas more toward the main road / viaducts area – even the road to Manchester was further east – still existing but joining the then newly built Wellington Road North a little way into Heaton Norris area. I think I am reminded of the old A6 coaching days when it seems – given the number of substaintially sized pubs in Edgeley that that area would have been a refreshment break / horse change area for the hills final up to Manchester and Up toward London in both directions from the valley of the Mersey, reminding us that interchange is nothing new under the sun.

    JBC Prestatyn

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  11. Good to be able to wait in the warm and dry, but it’s a pity that it looks as though passengers will have to scuttle further in the rain between the waiting area and the bus than they did with the old bus station.

    I’d assumed until part-way through the article that it was a combined bus/rail station or ready for a new tram extension but it seems not, leaving me baffled by the name change which is just misleading to me at least.

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  12. It’s not about how much they have spent to build a nice station at the start, its whether there is the budget to keep it nice (viz Stoke on Trent bus station/interchange–see the article on “Beauty of Transport”)

    Miles T

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  14. I took my first ride on route 100 linking Manchester on its second day of Bee operation last Monday, 26th March.

    No easy to use All Zone Saveaway here! Trying to get the right ticket highlights one of challenges Andy Burnham has where a Travelcard only covers trams and I too went in Shudehill to seek advice before going outside to tram stop to buy it. The person I asked didn’t know the price. I’m sure the Mayor has sorting the complicated fares system designed by accountants out as a high priority to the benefit of visitors like me.

    The Travel Centre had new 100 timetables and I took one only to find timetable didn’t have stand numbers when I later went to catch a 100 bus at Trafford Centre. It does have fares for what is a cross border service.

    I held up my Tram/bus ticket only for driver to reply “What’s That”, a world away from tapping my Saveaway loaded on my Walrus.

    One positive that has already come out of the Bee Network is an excellent feedback system where you can attach images up to 20MB. This proved handy when I later had to report a brand new bus whose bus stopping sign remained on for the whole journey after initially pressed. I had an instant reference number and a follow up saying the matter would be raised with Stagecoach.

    Stagecoachs awful feedback system has already disowned Bee buses. From previous experiences this has got to be another quick win.

    John Nicholas

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