ENGLAND’S REPURPOSED SHELTERS
Across England, many bus routes have utilised existing structures to accommodate waiting passengers.
The motor-bus, it has been found, can earn good receipts, not only in the wealthy districts of London (as provincial tramway managers distressfully insist) but in the town and country districts of the provinces,” The Electrician reports in 1913.
So profound was the success of the motor-bus across Britain that by 1926 a Europe-wide report prepared by the United States Department of Commerce concluded that the rapid expansion of this transport type had not only supplemented and remedied existing inadequate transport systems (i.e., tramways), but “vitally contributed in effecting closer contact and better mutual understanding among people in the same country.”
The bus, in other words, connected communities across Britain, often in dynamic ways that extant systems – on rail, chiefly – could not match. The embrace and expansion of buses across Britain shows itself in interesting ways, one being through the repurpose of certain buildings that by their size and location on roadways gave new lease to these structures and became attractive places for people to wait between services.
