I was interested to read about the bus station (Chronicle, September 19).

Big changes are afoot on buses and readers may want a say in two important consultations.

The consultation on the next Local Plan proposes moving the bus station to the railway station, so there can be a local transport interchange there. Winchester Action on the Climate Crisis Transport and Planning Group believe this change will be good for public transport journeys between all parts of the district and all stations on the railway system, reducing the time taken changing between buses and trains.

For this to work well, all bus services need to serve both the railway station and the centre of town, with changed timetables and bus routes. Buses from the east would run through the centre and terminate at the station, and buses from the north and west would call at the station and terminate in the centre. For example, this would let buses from Alton serve all parts of the centre and terminate at the station connecting with trains to and from Southampton and Bournemouth.

To give good connections, district buses would all arrive at roughly the same time to connect to northbound and southbound trains. Then all routes would be timetabled to depart after the trains have left taking passengers that have arrived off those trains. This will require plenty of space for the buses.

There is a bit of a problem, though. The city council is also consulting on the latest draft of the plan for the station area. But this has not allocated enough space for the bus station we would need. 

So we encourage readers to respond to the Local Plan consultation (by October 13) and the Station Area draft plan (by October 27) supporting this idea, asking them to specify that the master plan must include a transport interchange and to save enough space for this. 

Phil Gagg,

St Swithun Street,

Winchester

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