City should not demolish depot

Dear editor: Re: “Penticton buys site of Greyhound bus depot,” Herald, A1, Dec. 5

The penultimate paragraph states “staff have recommended that the depot be demolished and the site turned into a large parking lot in the meantime.”

Please, no! City Council must not allow the depot to be demolished! The city desperately needs a bus depot for the sake of its ongoing prosperity.

This purchase offers city council the opportunity to provide a facility that goes beyond the limited operation that existed when it was exclusively for the use of Greyhound.

City transit buses should have their routes modified so that all routes serving downtown come together in a single transit point rather than the present situation of transferring at various on street locations requiring passengers who wish to change routes to work out the best point to transfer between the two routes which, in some locations requires crossing one or two roads to get to the point where the next bus is waiting.

I’m sure that there have been numerous occasions where the bus which a passenger is trying to catch drives away whilst the passenger is waiting for the pedestrian lights to change. Using a bus depot as the transfer point would provide a heated waiting room rather than having to wait on a cold street in mid-winter.

In addition, medium distance buses such as those serving Osoyoos, Summerland or Naramata could stop at the new depot and it should be the designated passenger pickup point for any inter-city service, present or future, regardless of operator.

This would create a seamless passenger transfer facility between different intercity routes and between those routes and the in city transit services. There is an existing cafeteria, recently refurbished, although it might need some modification to provide a snack facility for passengers who only have a short time to wait.

Any surplus space which accommodated Greyhound’s parcels facility could be modified to provide retail space which would be attractive given the increased passenger traffic which would result.

City council should look forward to the future and, above all, should avoid demolishing a facility which they might later need to rebuild. Brian Butler,

Penticton

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