Milton Keynes Coachway

[MK Tom]

Actually no, they really bizarrely give virtually no service to the town where their vehicles are maintained. At least that was the case last I checked.

The grid roads are a lot busier than they used to be (probably due to the 40,000 extra people who've moved into MK in the last few years) but they still flow remarkably well and much better than the major routes into any city of comparable size (I say city because there are hardly any towns of comparable size, MK is the largest by population discounting Croydon and Dudley). Compare taking the H5 into CMK to taking London Road into Northampton. Why don't National Express have a terminal at Junction 15A instead of going into Northy? Especially now Greyfriars is closing.

It's just too big to be called a town in my view. A town is a medium sized place with some county-level influence, like Aylesbury or Kettering. Major hubs like MK and Reading are too big to be called that, I think doing so misrepresents them.

 

[IanD]

Why don't National Express have a terminal at Junction 15A instead of going into Northy? Especially now Greyfriars is closing.

I think they tried it out in the early nineties when the junction first opened and the service station was still called Rothersthorpe. I remember dropping my mate off who was catching a coach to Scotland, think it was a NatEx, may have been another operator.

 

[Flying Snail]

ANYWAY yes Megabus stops at Kingston. Megabus charge such low fares because they avoid paying to use major terminals. They did use the Coachway for a short while though.

Maybe the council could do a deal with them and get them to use the abandoned Central Bus Station.

As for the city/town debate at least now you have some sort of claim to fame as one of the largest towns in the country, get the city status and you will be one among many minor cities.

 

[overthewater]

I think they tried it out in the early nineties when the junction first opened and the service station was still called Rothersthorpe. I remember dropping my mate off who was catching a coach to Scotland, think it was a NatEx, may have been another operator.

Megabus stop at Watford Gap? Maybe stagecoach should operate a shuttle? I bet there might get a few punters. Problem is coaches are already full.

 

[tractakid]

Maybe the council could do a deal with them and get them to use the abandoned Central Bus Station.

As for the city/town debate at least now you have some sort of claim to fame as one of the largest towns in the country, get the city status and you will be one among many minor cities.

The central bus station has a new lease of life as the 'Buszy', run by organisation Make a Difference. Main focus is activities for young people. Far from abandoned! (a good place for long stay parking too, being so close to the railway station)

 

[MK Tom]

Gap is probably a little too far away from Northampton to act as a coachway for it... 15A seems logical to me. There's a lot of space available around there too.

Whilst the Buszy is a good idea and should exist, it doesn't make good use of the building which feels and looks completely dead. They should really either do a proper job on it, or move into one of the many vacant office buildings and put the bus station back into transport use.

 

[IanD]

The central bus station has a new lease of life as the 'Buszy', run by organisation Make a Difference. Main focus is activities for young people. Far from abandoned! (a good place for long stay parking too, being so close to the railway station)

Plus, perhaps more importantly , in October it hosts the Concrete Pint Beer festival!

 

[tractakid]

Gap is probably a little too far away from Northampton to act as a coachway for it... 15A seems logical to me. There's a lot of space available around there too.

Whilst the Buszy is a good idea and should exist, it doesn't make good use of the building which feels and looks completely dead. They should really either do a proper job on it, or move into one of the many vacant office buildings and put the bus station back into transport use.

I don't know when you last saw it, but the building is still a WIP. Approaching completion, now, I believe. I have to disagree with you about your comments, from what I have seen the building is used really well, and I very much doubt an office building would be a suitable replacement! Trying to have a cultural centre in an office block wouldn't really work.

 

[MK Tom]

I see it several times a week. I feel it gives a really terrible impression. It's a huge empty space externally, wrecked by skateboards and visibly a shadow of its former use. If the interior of the building is being fully utilised then that's great, but work needs to be done on the exterior. That space could be quality public realm.

Furthermore I'd like to see some development on the former bus stand area behind the station, which is just a wasteland if no buses are to use it. Likewise for the plot on the opposite side of Midsummer Boulevard. Right now there's just a hole in the city centre between Abbey House and Station Square.

 

[tractakid]

I see it several times a week. I feel it gives a really terrible impression. It's a huge empty space externally, wrecked by skateboards and visibly a shadow of its former use. If the interior of the building is being fully utilised then that's great, but work needs to be done on the exterior. That space could be quality public realm.

Furthermore I'd like to see some development on the former bus stand area behind the station, which is just a wasteland if no buses are to use it. Likewise for the plot on the opposite side of Midsummer Boulevard. Right now there's just a hole in the city centre between Abbey House and Station Square.

Why do skateboards 'wreck it'? The purposely designated skateboard area is well used and keeps skateboarders away from station square, which previously suffered damage from skateboard use.

The space behind the buszy (the former bus bays) is a very well used car park which generates income for the organisation. It offers commuters and daytrippers very convenient and well priced parking. I wouldn't consider that wasteland.

I don't understand what you mean by the exterior of the building. The entrance/fenced area was developed nicely. One exterior improvement that has taken place since becoming the buszy was the installation of solar panels, the data for which is displayed on entering the building upstairs.

What else can be done? The wide bus stops the station side of the building could be considered redundant space, but I would imagine that's council business. What could be done with that space that is useful though? It's main use at the moment is for buses waiting when they are not yet due, and for taxis to hang about. What could you come up with?

 

[MK Tom]

The skateboards are fine within their area but they often go right down to the north end of the building, and then at the other end there's the bad-looking metal fencing which is bashed to death on the footpath alongside Avebury Boulevard. It all creates an image of decay and neglect.

I'd have some every day activities to bring people in and create a busier environment. A restaurant, having the Thrift shop open daily, more small shops or cafes to create a focal point. Re-do the paving with brighter materials, clean the outside of the building. At the moment, as you come past it on the X5 or such like, it just gives a first impression of CMK as ''here's a derelict disused bus station''. As for the car parking, well that's good if it's useful, but the urban form isn't consistent between the station and the rest of the centre. We need to retain the car parking alongside the Gates and Boulevards, that's part of how they work. But I prefer to avoid parking WITHIN the blocks, like in the Elder/Midsummer/Silbury/Grafton block or the one between Midsummer/Lower Third/Lower/Fourth/Grafton Park. It creates holes in the urban form and gives an unfinished impression. We should have massed urban form surrounded by parking, with that parking lining the boulevards and gates (preferably one row on Boulevards and two on Gates, as per the original masterplan). Additional parking beyond that aught to be multi-story. It doesn't create a good city image to have the Boulevard frontages interrupted by massive open unused spaces.

 

[MK Tom]

This map shows the areas I think most need developing:

(Don't ask me what 'Kirkstall Place' is supposed to be!)

 

[IanD]

Well, the 5 bits of "derelict" land in an arc around the train station are all heavily used parking areas. Why do you want to build on them and when you do, where are you supposed to park when using the station?

 

[MK Tom]

The bottommost of those five is supposed to be a multi-story to match the one to the north. It was meant to be built years ago but the money ran out. That alone would make a pretty big difference.

The site opposite Abbey House is a private car park so that doesn't really count. Just incorporate it into the development. One underground parking layer to replace it, another to cater for the development itself.

The ones behind the two buildings on either side of station square are small plots, usually partly closed off and also partly private to the business that use those buildings. Developments there are admittedly hard to justify given the closed off locations. But the rear faces of Elder House and whatever the other one's called are unwelcoming, not-overlooked spaces that many people have to walk through daily. Also I worked in Elder House for a while and it's empty!!! VAST amounts of all three buildings around Station Square are languishing empty spaces. On the inside they're kitted out like hotels. There's a real asset there we could be using.

The other one is the bus station like we're discussing.

BTW I accidentally left off the Wyvale plot but that's not really relevant here.

 

[gordonthemoron]

+ the Food Centre

 

[tractakid]

The food centre certainly is suffering. Sainsbury's is being selfish, blocking access to the retail space they used to occupy. Waitrose has now moved ~2 miles away. It could really do with some popular new retailers to give it a breath of fresh air.

Regarding a cafe... the buszy now has one open 6 days a week. Very quiet when I went in there on saturday, though.

I'm sure that the buszy will continue to develop and improve.

 

[BuhSnarf]

When I visited the food centre the other week it was like stepping in to 1960 post apocalyptic world. So quiet.

Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk 2

 

[MK Tom]

What took you in there? Nothing left except Iceland and an ultraviolet toilet...

 

[IanD]

What took you in there? Nothing left except Iceland and an ultraviolet toilet...

Plus a car park that's free parking for a couple of hours (3 on weekends).

 

[BuhSnarf]

I was just out wandering...

Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk 2

 

[Teflon Lettuce]

It's true actually, but believe what you want.

The point is we are in the UK and in the UK a city is specifically defined as having a royal charter. What does it matter if other countries don't have a word for city? Milton Keynes is a new town. Yes (in my opinion) it deserves to be awarded city status but until it is, it isn't a city and pretending that it is one more thing that non-MK people take the mickey about. And calling itself a city devalues the term and is probably one of the reasons it gets turned down time after time. If city status is pointless, why does our council spend hundreds of thousands of pounds of our council tax money on pursuing it at every opportunity? And if city status is meaningless, why would you insist on calling MK a city?

so we are wrong calling a town just south of stevenage Welwyn Garden CITY?

truth is, while Milton Keynes is not officially a city by the definition of law, the original legislation to build Milton Keynes described it as a "new city" hence why it refers to itself as a city. Also the original design brief for MK was that it should be a city within a forest... hence 22 million trees!

 

[IanD]

so we are wrong calling a town just south of stevenage Welwyn Garden CITY?

truth is, while Milton Keynes is not officially a city by the definition of law, the original legislation to build Milton Keynes described it as a "new city" hence why it refers to itself as a city. Also the original design brief for MK was that it should be a city within a forest... hence 22 million trees!

That's Welwyn which is a Garden City a concept devised in late Victorian times and only applied to Welwyn and Letchworth in England. Neither have been granted official city status but the concept of the Garden City did lead to the new town movement which led to the development of Milton Keynes. Unfortunately, MK missed the boat and was not developed as a Garden City and neither has it been granted official city status. So it's a town/borough despite what the legislation to form it might say.

 

[MK Tom]

Not to weigh in on the city status stuff or anything, as I'm confident we'll get that before long, but just as an interesting point MK was intended to be a return to Howard's 'garden city' ideas. After the first and second wave of new towns had gone in a more modernist concrete direction (think Runcorn, Hemel Hempstead, Bracknell, Corby, Skelmersdale etc.) the third generation (only really MK and Telford in terms of NEW new towns) were intended to be more green and in line with his mix of city and country ideas. The same planning ethos can be seen in the suburbs of Peterborough. Anyone who knows MK will know how Midsummer Boulevard lines up with the sun and with the island in Willen Lake, the Cathedral of Trees and various other things; that kind of Washington-style central avenue or mall was something else carried over from the two garden cities.

 

[gordonthemoron]

I thought the Cathedral of Trees was near Whipsnade Zoo?

 

[MK Tom]

Nope... it's in Newlands.

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/preview#!data=!1m4!1m3!1d1434!2d-0.7297931!3d52.0532655!2m1!1e3&fid=7

Zoom out a bit and you'll see it lines up with Midsummer Bvd, which in turn lines up with sunsets.

 

[IanD]

Nope... it's in Newlands.

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/preview#!data=!1m4!1m3!1d1434!2d-0.7297931!3d52.0532655!2m1!1e3&fid=7

Zoom out a bit and you'll see it lines up with Midsummer Bvd, which in turn lines up with sunsets.

There is one near Whipsnade too.