In all the various council meetings over the last two years where we have discussed the rebuilding of Reading station and the Station Hill area south of it, I and my Lib Dem colleagues have been consistent in calling for a new bus station to replace the current one we are going to lose. Reading’s bus network is centred on the station which is a terminus afor many routes bringing passengers in to the town centre.

The current development plans drawn up by the Labour Administration, supported and continued by the Tories has been to do away with any sort of bus station and to drop passengers at bus stops on the roads surrounding the station where they will fall into streets already busy with pedestrian traffic. There will be no kiosk for a cup of tea, no covered walkway from the station entrance, no toilet facilites and definitely no bus information desk. In short there will be a complete lack of facilities for bus passengers who will have to walk through crowded streets to find their own way to a bus stop. This will obviously be a splendid way to welcome visitors to Reading……’oh you want to catch the bus, well cross over the station plaza turn left and take the next turning on the right and half way down the street you should find a bus stop.’

Unlike Bolton, Cardiff, Derby, Liverpool, Mansfield, Stoke, Stourbridge, Swansea or Warwick, all of which have just built or are planning to build new bus stations we in Reading are to have our passengers disembark in the middle of town, onto busy pavements full of shoppers and other pedestrians, and then have to find their own way several hundred metres to the rail station.

Our Labour and Tory councillors apparently believe that bus stations are not the modern way of travelling, they have consistently voted down our ideas for any sort of bus station in amongst the new station redevelopment or the Station Hill development opposite the station. Given that Reading Station is also the hub of our local bus service this is a very strange approach to take. For all their support for Reading Buses, this town’s other two major parties have let down the people of Reading and condemned bus passengers to a very second rate service.