A SCOTTISH BUS STATION.
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Particulars of the First Station to be Erected Across the Border.
THE SCOTTISH General Transport Co., Ltd., whose head offices are at Carmyle House, I3othwell, Glasgow, have exhibited commendable enterprise by acquiring a site at the end of Portland Street, Kilmarnock, upon which they intend to build, at an early date, a well-equipped motorbus station. This company is one of the largest and most important concerns operating passenger road vehicles, and they control a comprehensive network of bus services over the whole of the industrial midlands and south-west of Scotland.
The company's buses are run to definite time-tables, to which they adhere as closely as do railway trains, and comparison between the two systems will be further increased by the additional facilities provided at the bus station which will be accorded passengers using their vehicles.
The station in Portland Street is to be a real station in the true sense of the term, and it is hoped that it will avoid the iried for passengers waiting at street corners for buses. The original plan provides for three platforms, from which the buses operating on the various routes will leave. A capacious waiting-room parcels office and other conveniences are incorporated in the scheme, and at the corner of Portland Street and East George Street an inquiry office will be situated. The headquarter offices of the -company will also be included in the station, and a large portion of the site will, of course, be used as a garage for buses off-service or waiting their time of departure.
Workshops are to be situated at the rear of the building, and here it is intended to centralize all repair and overhaul work, as well as repainting and bodywork construction so far as the whole system is concerned.
The entire scheme will confer benefits on Kilmarnock., and thcise who use the company's vehicles running to and from this centre. The building operations will be begun so soon as practicable, and it is the company's ihtention to have the structure completed and in Dill working order by the early summer of 1923.
We dealt in our last week's issue with bus stations which have been erected at Derby and Maidstone, but that which is to be erected by the Scottish General Transport Co., Ltd., bids fair to offer additional public convenience, whilst., if the present scheme is carried through, it
will be of larger dimensions than either of those stations. It is the first bus station to be mooted in Scotland, and the Scottish General Transport Co., Ltd., are, therefore, to be commended for the initiative which they have displayed in an endeavour further to improve the facilities and convenience provided passengers travelling, by road motor vehicle.
The Aquarium Coach Scheme.
The future of the Brighton Aquarium will probably be decided to-day (Tuesday), when the Ministry of Health is holding an inquiry into the proposed scheme which leases the property to the Southdown Motor Services, Ltd., for the construction of a motor coach station on the existing site. Considerable local opposition has been advanced Against the scheme, and Mr. Charles Thomas-Stanford, M.P. for Brighton, In commenting on the council's decision, said: " To condemn the Aquarium to become a receptacle .for motor coaches for 60 years is to admit Brighton's bankruptcy of ideas. Surely it. is possible to devise for this site a use which shall not only be a credit to the town, but also a source of revenue."
The promoters maintain that they are doing Brighton a service by paying an annual rental of R2,I300 for the site and putting down £80,000 capital.
We hope to deal with the outcome of the inquiry in our next issue.