Southampton’s new bus hub

Thursday 6th February 2025

Southampton gained a new bus hub at the end of last year, and I got round to paying a visit early on Sunday morning to see what the £3.9 million spent has delivered.

It’s located on Castle Way by Albion Place south of the popular West Quay Shopping Centre and close to where many of the city’s bus routes set down and pick up in Portland Terrace and Castle Way close to where Bluestar had a Travel Shop.

I say ‘had’ as that’s been relocated closer to the new bus hub as part of the changes which coincided with the landlord of the previous premises wanting to covert the upper floor, used as staff refreshment and rest facilities, to flats.

The scheme, which was officially opened on 13th December, includes a very nicely laid out small ‘urban park’ alongside the historic city walls as well as a five bay area for buses and further bus stops marked out in Barrgate and Castle Way/Portland Terrace which has become buses and cycles only.

Being early on a Sunday morning and with very bright February sunlight beaming down from a clear sky, I must say what a great improvement the new facilities offer making for a very attractive area for bus passengers.

Southampton City Council has used “high quality public realm materials enhancing the town’s heritage setting” and it certainly showed on Sunday morning.

It’s even more impressive to know that before the development the area was given over to car parking…

Photo courtesy Southampton City Council

… so well done to the City Council for repurposing a centrally located car park facility for use by buses and an improved public realm for pedestrians.

The bus shelters and waiting facilities for passengers at the new bus stops are to a high standard with a proper seat rather than those uncomfortable perch type things you see in other places, including new railway stations.

Each shelter has a real time display as well as a static list of departures and a diagram…

… showing where all the adjacent bus stops are and which bus routes depart from each one.

As well as an alphabetical list of destinations showing the bus route number and departure bay, there’s a comprehensive numerical list of where each bus route departs and online you’ll find a list by stand letter.

Bus stop flags show which route numbers stop…

… with corporate colours for Bluestar and standard print for First Bus.

Bluestar’s novel new circular shaped Travel Shop (and staff rest facility) in its newly relocated position can be conveniently found opposite the new bus hub.

Obviously it wasn’t open early on a Sunday morning but Go South Coast (of which Bluestar is a part) managing director Andrew Wickham has kindly supplied some interior photos so readers can appreciate the warm welcome on offer from Phil and Tim to customers…

… as well as an inviting display of printed timetables and information…

… and an attractive and reassuring network map on the wall.

In an era when more and more companies seem to be distancing themselves from wanting direct contact with customers (particularly face to face) it’s so refreshing to see a bus company investing in the provision of helpful information with a human presence in town centres where passengers can easily access it. Phil and Tim tell me they’re kept busy selling tickets and dealing with enquiries about bus routes especially for people without Internet access or find seeking such information online a daunting experience and of course the much appreciated service of reuniting customers with lost property, not least mobile phones, from a convenient location.

Inevitably with every Council being keen on ‘active travel’ these days, the new hub also includes some cycle stands…

… and it was good to see litter bins, and very large ones too.

All in all, a great investment and well done Southampton City Council.

Almost £4 million is a lot to spend on a few bus stops, but these things don’t come cheap these days, not last 2,000 individual plants, nine trees, 700 square metres of grass as well as new paving, benches, litter bins, road resurfacing, nice new bus shelters and the creation of a very pleasant area to catch buses from.

And well done to Bluestar too, and in particular managing director Andrew Wickham who I was delighted to see received a well deserved MBE in the New Year Honours and is pictured (left) at the Bus Hub’s opening with  Councillor Eammon Keogh, Cabinet Member for Environment and Transport.

Roger French

Blogging timetable: 06:00 TThS

35 thoughts on “Southampton’s new bus hub”

  1. I’ve enjoyed your posts for some time.

    But why, presumably for a UK audience, do you have to post at 6am?

    I’ve just unsubscribed as I’m fed up with being woken up 3 days a week at this hour (I have to keep my phone on because of the on-call work that I do).

    I’d be intrigued to know why.

    Thanks for your detailed and frank pieces which show the industry as it really is.
    Good wishes.

    Like

    1. I don’t get a notification “ping” from this blog but I do from others. There is no logic to it and I have no desire to change it.

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    1. I live just outside Southampton on the waterside and find myself asking why they have done this.

      To explain the bus hub is used exclusively for buses that leave Southampton along Millbrook Road, so there isn’t any form of interchange. The hub is less than 100 yards from the West Quay stops which remains in use and offer better shelter in bad weather.

      The bus services that serve the waterside are recognised as inadequate and providing additional stops does not change anything. The same services prior to the fare cap were also recognised for the extremely high fares.

      Whilst I prefer to use public transport, it’s buses I want not nice new bus stops less than 100 yards from perfectly functioning ones. I used to use the car park that has been removed and am feeling a net loss from this vanity project. Regrettably it is far from unusual for Southampton City Council, which is on the verge of bankruptcy to spend vast sums of money on projects of little benefit.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. The Waterside buses always seem really busy to me, and my bus, Bluestar 9, has recently been upgraded with improved frequency and new early late buses. I interchange at the hub onto buses heading towards the south of the city.

        Maybe leave your car at home and actually try using the bus perhaps, as sounds like you are commenting without any real experience (or up-to-date information). Maybe you are just upset as you now have to park a couple of minutes further away from a shop.

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  3. Plans to build new Colchester bus station as current one ‘not fit for purpose’

    Colchester could get a new bus station to give passengers and visitors “a better experience” as part of a huge overhaul of the city centre. According to a council boss, the current bus station in Osborne Street is “not fit for purpose” and gives “a poor impression” of the city.

    Initial talks are underway between Colchester City Council and Essex County Council about boosting public transport, which could offer new facilities, more capacity, and more comfort. It’s part of wider regeneration in and around Osborne Street and the city centre, which the council says “will support Colchester’s development over the coming decades, with a respect for its past and ambition for its future”. The masterplan will look at improving the wider city centre area, urban design strategies, the retail core of the city centre, and design frameworks for key sites.

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    1. “According to a council boss, the current bus station in Osborne Street is “not fit for purpose” and gives “a poor impression” of the city.”

      That’s quite possibly because it’s not a bus station in the first place, just a handful of on-street stops which got called a bus station to hide the closure of the original city centre bus station. Not that the actual bus station was much better; like those at Northampton and Lincoln, it was a cold, unwelcoming concrete hole beneath a multi-storey car park.

      I dislike the pretence that on-street stops are a bus station, though. To me a bus station is a off-street, even if it isn’t much more than a piece of land with shelters like Wells or Yeovil, or even a turning circle like Castle Donington’s used to be. Perhaps I’m just an angry old mouse.

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  5. The new high quality staff mealbreak facilities, and management offices, are a short walk away in Bargate on two floors over some shops.

    The timetables available include the Southern Vectis timetable book.

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  6. It may look nice but the existing stops were actually perfectly fine & were nearer other stops for connecting buses which do not stop at the hub anyway. It’s just a terminal stop for a few routes. The new hub was built to effectively have a better place to park buses that were not in service. They were just previously parked on the road in laybys. Most people won’t use the stop as too open & the stops & the silly park (!) will be a centre for shall we say ‘social dropouts’. The stops further up the road near Asda are more likely to be used by people as much safer. The road closure was controversial in stopping cars as now they have to go on a circuit around the outside actually adding more time to trips & the car park was useful for short stays.

    The BStar shop was originally the shopmobility centre for blue badge disabled drivers. So that facility is lost. Not blaming BS as great got a shop but the council plans were silly from the outset!

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  7. Gosh! After reading previous comments, there really is no pleasing some people is there? Anything which gives the humble bus a step up over car-use addiction has to be good, and yes, it is a much more satisfactory arrangement for parking buses than previously.

    Talking of bus stations in Southampton…who can forget that “upstart” Brother and Sister from Scotland who bought Hants and Dorset one day, then flogged off the huge Southampton bus station the next for a sum which equalled the entire purchase price. That soon woke the Industry and the National Bus Co. up from it’s slumbers and suddenly buses became hot property. As the Souters claimed at the time, they “were bringing the bus out of the dark ages” and they certainly did that. In spite of constant hounding from overpaid Idiots in the various “competition” regimes, later governments actually sought them out for advice.

    Terence Uden

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    1. Showing my age, I regularly used Southampton bus station and yes it was a sad loss to the city, but in a newly deregulated let’s make money culture in the late 1980’s, it was hardly surprising and as Terence says, that soon woke up the industry. The bus depot and small coach station site in Bedford Place were also sold as well.of course. I remember it being a challenge to find the right stop in the city centre after that, apart from Southampton Citybus services of course, conveniently located with a travel office and readily available inspectors in Pound Tree Road. But we all know what happened there eventually….

      There is a lack of available space in Southampton city centre in any case and although the new bus hub may not be perfect and is in no way comparable to the bus station of many years ago (which would probably be considered way too large now if it was still in existence and for those who don’t know, it also encompassed the road behind, the name of which escapes me now), it is at least an improvement from what was there before.

      Not everyone will agree, but at least Southampton has one stable bus network now and wasteful competition has been eliminated. When those already elderly flat screen Bristol VRTs first appeared on the initial Solent Blue Line three routes, I don’t think many of us would have predicted how it would all turn out.

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      1. Keith, the road name that you had forgotten was Windsor Terrace. There were two of the bus station stops in that section of road, and one in the adjacent Manchester Street.

        My understanding has always been that it was the sale of the depot and coach station complex in Grosvenor Square that brought more money than the Hampshire Bus company was “worth” as a whole. The location, quite near to one of the well-known city centre parks, was ideal for up-market residential and office property.

        Whether that means that Hampshire Bus was sold for too low a price will no doubt always be the subject of debate.

        Regarding the elderly flat screen Bristol VRTs, Keith may recall that Solent Blue Line assigned names to several of their buses a few months after operations commenced in 1987. The names were mostly those of charities active in the Southampton area – and, hopefully, the representatives of Age Concern were pleased to see their organisation’s name assigned to the eldest of those flat screen VRTs!

        RC169

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    2. There is a scurrilous rumour going round that Stagecoach cofounder, Dame Ann Gloag, is now, thanks to the company’s wheeling and dealing and selling off of bus stations, in possession of a Scottish castle bought through the proceeds, thereof.

      This is not the case. She is now in possession of two Scottish castles through these proceeds.

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        1. Criticism of the Souters buying public assets cheap just to flog them to a higher bidder seems to have struck a nerve with Terrance. To claim the criticism is as a result of jealousy is simply nonsense.

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          1. Who’s “Terrance”? If you’re going to snark at someone, at least get their name right!

            A.N.M. (who is neither Terrance nor Terence!)

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        2. @Terence Uden – to pick up on your earlier comment, if Stagecoach sold Southampton Bus Station for the same price they had just paid for the entire Hampshire Bus company, that suggests they were lucky enough to buy it at too cheap a price. Not their fault, of course, that the company had been undervalued but in bagging that bargain, their good fortune was the taxpayers’ loss.

          The expansion of Stagecoach was not without some interesting moments, the introduction of temporarily-free services in Darlington being probably the most well-documented. I doubt Darlington’s council-taxpayers benefitted from the collapse of the council-owned operator (just when it had been about to be sold).

          Malc M

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          1. @Malc M – I’m not sure that it is correct to say that Stagecoach bought the entire Hampshire Bus company at “too cheap a price”. I suspect that the valuation of a business is not an exact science, and that, while a successful and profitable business would be worth more than the combined values of the individual elements that it owned, a less successful business could be worth less as a complete whole then the sum of the values of all of its individual assets. The “value” of a business at any given time is probably the highest sum that a buyer would actually pay for it, at that moment in time.

            I recall seeing a report submitted to Hampshire County Council in the early 1980’s, which mentioned that two of the NBC operators serving Hampshire were among the three worst performing subsidiaries, Bristol Omnibus and Hants & Dorset. ( It didn’t name the third because it presumably did not serve Hampshire. ) So I would guess that the finances of Hampshire Bus were not particularly healthy.

            In any case, as I understand it, when the government sold the NBC subsidiaries, bids were invited from interested parties, so ( presumably ) Stagecoach made the best offer. One could, of course, speculate whether the result would have been different if H&D had been split differently, for example with Southampton and Eastleigh offered as a separate entity, and the buses from Southampton depot relocated to Barton Park in Eastleigh. Then the government could have collected the proceeds from the sale of the Grosvenor Square depot/coach station complex in Southampton – but that is all pure speculation.

            RC169

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            1. @RC169 – that’s an interesting point.

              Doing some digging in the National Archives, I have unearthed the National Audit Office report, from 1990, which looked at the sale of the NBC subsidiaries: NAO report (HC 43 1990/91): Department of Transport: Sale of the National Bus Company.

              The report notes that in the earlier privatisations, the proceeds from the sales were lower than in the later ones. Many of the early sales attracted just one bid. Hampshire Bus was sold fairly early, in April 1987. It was the first sale of a bus operating subsidiary to a buyer other than the company’s existing management. Net book value for Hampshire Bus was £2.8million, Stagecoach got it for £2.2million. For some NBC sales, there was a mortgage charge applied to the proceeds of selling off property within 10 years of the company being privatised – and Hampshire Bus was one of the companies to which this applied. It isn’t clear whether this applied to all of the properties or, if not, whether Southampton Bus Station was on the lost of mortgaged properties. Maybe it was, so maybe Stagecoach only kept some of the proceeds (for sales in the first four years, the government would typically claw back 55%).

              Another point raised in the NAO report is that the bus industry was facing considerable uncertainty at the time of privatisation, with deregulation happening simultaneously. Perhaps the wisdom of rushing to sell off at the same time as creating the uncertainty of deregulation is questionable.

              Three months after selling Southampton’s bus station, Stagecoach sold Hampshire Bus’ Southampton operations, and (I think) around 80 vehicles, to Solent BlueLine.

              Malc M

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  8. From the fist pictures I was getting vibes of the current bus interchange at Luton but the later pictures made it clear that this new bus station at Southampton feels smaller, with much more attractive public realm.

    Interesting the bus shelter seats don’t have “hostile” arm-rest hoops (the very similar shelter seats ones in Luton do).

    Luton bus interchange was redeveloped some years ago–2011?–to provide a clean bright efficient functional facility next to the train station, replacing a set of bays in the dark ground floor of a multi-story car park (demolished), and also providing a more attractive entrance to the town centre proper (although very “open” and a bit windswept in bad weather)

    But it is now proposed to be redeveloped again (largely removing it) as part of a wider regeneration plan costing £136 million!

    Maybe worth a writeup next time you happen to be in the area, didn’t spot any past posts which covered it, and also considering the potential future removal/relocation.

    MilesT

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  9. No mention I can see of any toilet facilities. This should be a mandatory feature of any bus hub, station etc. (I missed a superloop connection at North Finchley ‘Bus Station’ [which is actually a couple of benches with no real time bus info] because I had to find a cafe and patronise it as there were no loos.

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  10. It looks to be in the wrong place and not a proper bus station or hub. As a “hub” it is not next to the railway station. I am concerned about the lack of interest in bus stations in so many towns now, eg Bracknell’s very useful bus station, just near the railway station too, now amazingly under threat. Do towns no longer employ qualified town planners? and are councillors no longer interested?

    Malcolm Chase, Buses Worldwide

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    1. “As a “hub” it is not next to the railway station.”

      It’s a “bus hub”, not a “multi-modal interchange”, so why should it be next the railway station?

      Southampton Central station is some distance from the city centre (just over half-a-mile from the “bus hub”) and therefore not where city-centre-bound customers are likely to wish to get dumped, and in any case it already has its own perfectly good stops near both the north and south entrances.

      But thank you for calling it “railway station” rather than “train station”, a term which gets my tail in a twist!

      Liked by 1 person

  11. For those who do not have an ENCTS pass yet, do buy BusPlus at your local station if planning to “do” Southampton’s buses, starting from home by train. This is Multi Operator!

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    1. “do buy BusPlus at your local station”

      PlusBus, not BusPlus, and you should be able to buy it wherever you buy your rail tickets, be that online or at a “Rail Appointed Travel Agency” (if any of those still exist) or indeed at a station ticket office while those still exist – they will come under attack by HM Treasury when GBR takes over. The previous DfT plans haven’t been binned and they will be dusted off.

      As may the Serpell Report (as a threat from HMT and DfT) if some of the mutterings emanating from fairly high-level in the industry are true.

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  12. Local Authority Councillors seem to be getting younger these days.

    Nice to see the Guide Dogs for The Blind cash collection bin in the hub room

    If the little walkways at evenings get taken over by roller bladers (they are still around enjoying some flat places) I think that is no bad thing.

    Interesting to see if removal of some car parking places see a small rise in bus usage

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  14. It was not needed & not wanted & will be not used for its intended purpose.

    Literally 100m up the road is West Quay shopping centre. There’s a bus stop there that most sensible folk will use especially in the rain & dark & if less able on the feet. You have to specifically walk AWAY from the shops to board here.

    Buses on layover used the stands already there.

    Unless you actually live in/around Southampton & use the buses you will not understand how pathetic the new hub is on a daily basis. No proper protection from wind or rain in the Quay area.

    Those changing buses in Soton would not do so here. You would alight either at Asda & simply cross the road or Civic centre & cross the road. Both have Pelican crossings. Or even at the Railway station.

    There is no public toilet in the hub. No cafe either.

    It has seating that will encourage drunks to claim as their bed for the nigh. Or day.

    And as for the ‘pocket park’! Been called several drug user terms already.

    Yes nice bus office nearby but again that is just a replacement as old crew room relocated. Full marks to BS for having a Travel shop.

    Liked by 1 person

  15. Fully agree with above ‘not needed’ posting. Let us not forget that the road is now closed to cars forcing those HAVING to travel by car more mileage & causing more pollution due to the now enhanced traffic queues around the outside.

    Loss of car parking for disabled users too. Many who just can not use buses. No, oh yes they can comments please unless you actually suffer from serious disability & pain.

    Southampton will lose many people who will simply switch to driving to other areas that offer free parking adjacent to the shops for example Whiteley village (junct 9 M27). The boarded up shops & drunk beggars in the Above Bar is enough alone to put people off shopping! Let alone poor parking & high cost where you can. Yes bus promotion is good but presenting a Sow’s ear as a silk purse for the publicity & attracted attention (ie this blog) simply is a falsehood.

    Note….. Blue star always do great bus stop publicity. So they must get their credit anyway.

    Liked by 1 person

  16. Went past the bus hub today at Peak teatime on a busy Monday.

    NO ONE waiting at the bus hub.

    Several people waiting apx 75100m up the road by the West Quay for buses.

    Another Southampton city council folly!

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