The bus station beneath Manchester’s Arndale, with its Clipper Cards, Saver Sevens and unmistakable smell of diesel, is a memory for many Manchester residents. Although it’s dark and dingy, with wall tiles the colour of vomit, it exudes a certain nostalgia.
Described as “not a place to linger after dark”, this bus station opened on 24 September 1979. It was part of the £100 million Arndale Centre development, replacing several smaller roadside stations in and around the city centre.
The main entrance was on Cannon Street, with a rear entrance on Shudehill. Inside there was a travel shop where passengers could buy the popular Clipper Cards (10 for the price of 9) or Saver Seven weekly bus passes. There was also a newsagent owned and operated by Greater Manchester Transport.
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Paul Williams, a volunteer at the Museum of Transport, Greater Manchester, recalls that despite its shortcomings, the station was a marked improvement on the previous station. “It was very much of its time,” he previously told the Manchester Evening News.
He added: “In the mid-80s I lived in Leigh and regularly caught the last bus home. Let’s just say if the bus left at 11pm you were there by five. It wasn’t the kind of place you hung out at.
“It was dark, there were lots of dark corners, it smelled of diesel and oil, it had brown and yellow tiles like the rest of the Arndale and it was lit with sodium lamps so everything had this yellow glow. It wasn’t particularly healthy but it served its purpose.”
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“It was much better than what was there before – which was basically a lot of awful, small, leaky bus stops on Cannon Street. There were facilities, it was dry.”
In 1991, the station was reportedly one of the busiest in Manchester, with around 30,000 passengers and 1,500 bus journeys a day. However, it was far from popular with people, especially women.
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In a 1996 study entitled “A Tale of Two Cities”, which looked at Manchester and Sheffield, the authors concluded that female passengers found the interior of the station “gloomy and threatening”, earning it the status of one of the city centre’s “landscapes of fear”.
You might think that the station looked outdated even in the early 1990s or earlier, when passengers had to walk over traffic and between buses to find their stop – a practice that would be a cause for concern today.
Keeping the station operational would have required a fairly costly renovation. Nevertheless, the decision about its fate was made under rather dramatic circumstances.
The Arndale was one of dozens of buildings badly damaged by an IRA bomb that exploded just yards away in Corporation Street on 15 June 1996. The station never reopened.
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In the massive reconstruction of the city centre that followed, Cannon Street disappeared completely from the map. Shudehill Bus Station, a modern marvel with floor-to-ceiling windows and a light, airy design, stands in stark contrast to the subterranean gloom of its predecessor.
But Paul Williams says we shouldn’t judge Arndale Station too harshly.
“Greater Manchester Transport invested a lot of money in bus stations back then,” he said.
“They built the Bury interchange. Oldham and Wigan got their first proper bus stops. They were an improvement on what was there before.”
“And people have fond memories of Arndale station. Everyone in Manchester over 40-45 has used Arndale bus station.”
Remember Arndale bus station? Let us know in the comments section below.
