Bus Exchange

As the Bus Exchange would not have the capacity of a terminus, where vehicles lay over for a length of time until their next run starts, an extensive restructuring of bus routes was required. Two techniques were used that allowed the Bus Exchange to be used as a normal bus stop:

• The terminus for a route ending in the central city was relocated to the edge of the central city, opposite to where the route came from. That greatly increased coverage of the central city, but also significantly increased bus volumes on central city streets. It also required the establishment of new termini, some of which near residential land use proved to be quite controversial.
• Where routes came from opposite ends of the city, they were combined to form through routes.

The former technique was the main one to be employed initially. Over time, routes have increasingly been through-routed as bus contracts came up for renewal.[2]

The Bus Exchange was made up of two main components for buses:[3]

• The off-street section – nine bus stops were located around the two indoor passenger lounges accessed from Lichfield Street
• The on-street section – an initial six (eight since 2009) bus stops were located on Colombo Street
• In addition, there is an outside bus stop on Lichfield Street that is used by the airport bus (route 29).
• There is also a pair of stops for The Shuttle on Colombo Street; those stops are in addition to those used by other buses.

The original layout had 15 bus stops (nine inside and six on Colombo Street). Initially, the stops for The Shuttle used to be physically separated from the Colombo Street stops; the Shuttle stops were north of Cashel Street, whilst the Bus Exchange stops were south of it. When the number of Bus Exchange stops on Colombo Street was increased from six to eight, the northbound Shuttle stop moved to south of Cashel Street and was then immediately adjacent to the other stops.