On Wed, 23 Aug 2006 17:11:44 +0100, Peter Frimberley
wrote:

On Tue, 22 Aug 2006 17:18:51 +0100, Dave Arquati
wrote:

Planning permission was granted in 2004 for a temporary extension to
Hammersmith bus station using a vacant lot on the north east corner of
the Hammersmith gyratory. The extension would have provided overflow
capacity for the main bus station which is currently at capacity,
allowing service expansion and the short extension of routes 267 and H91
from their terminus on Grove Road outside the Hammersmith & City line
station to the new bus station to provide better interchange on journeys
into Hammersmith.

The aim was to have this temporary station operating from the end of
2004, with its eventual replacement within 5-7 years by a permanent
upper-level extension to the main bus station itself over the railway
tracks.

However, nothing ever happened, and I can find just two real mentions of
the scheme:

Well a couple of things happened. They did move the Emerald Centre
across the road to the bottom end of the Grove, to a set of
portacabins on a corner of the car park; and they did level the site.
The wooden "T" markers are still planted in the ground from that
levelling exercise. But then everything stopped and the site is now
thoroughly overgrown.

Very odd, considering they built that bus layover area at Shepherds
Bush tube station in about two weeks, you would think they could do
something similarly quick and low budget at Hammersmith, much the
same, with the addition of a few bus shelters. Maybe they worked out
how much it would cost to modify the traffic lights, or some other HSE
reason meant it would be stupidly expensive to do, so they gave up.

They should have left the original bus station that was right there
until what, 10 or 12 years ago?

Actually in case you haven't seen it, the original planning approval
can be seen in PDF form on the LBHF website at
http://tinyurl.com/krymd. It does come with a number of conditions
about contamination and trees, so maybe one of those conditions
tripped things up.

Alternatively, since it was ony temporary until a more permanent
building got built there incorporating a more permanent bus station,
maybe someone like Disney made noises about actually getting on and
building the permanent structure instead, however there is nothing
logged on the LBHF planning site.

The temporary planning permission runs out 1 March 2009 so I would
guess it is safe to say they won't be building it now