Temple Meads should take its styling cues from Hannover

THE best solution to traffic and Temple Meads Station, would be to emulate the Central Station at Hannover in Germany – a similarly large and busy station with a multiplicity of tracks, platforms and rail services.

There, as with Bristol, the tracks are at an elevated situation, with the opportunity that gives for providing a very wide, weather-free and traffic-free pedestrian underpass-cum-shopping-mall-cumservice facility from one side of the station and city to the other.

At Hannover, the booking office for trains, taxis, buses and flights is situated in this public space, which has immediate access at each end to taxis, buses, and drop-off points for private cars.

Under each platform, at each side of the pedestrian way, there are stairs, escalators and lifts to the platforms above, which also have glazed waiting rooms for shortterm waiting.

For very long platforms, there might be a parallel pedestrian way, linked to the first.

There are no high level entrances for the public. The wide underpass provides also a good shopping mall along its sides, bringing in revenue to the railway, providing everything from snack and coffee bars to restaurant, holiday, food and clothing shops, useful for travellers and city dwellers alike.

Adopting this layout, the high level access to Temple Meads, with its difficult access from the A4, could be abandoned, together with its bus, taxi and parking impossibilities.

The pedestrian way would bring the Temple Island area into regular contact with all the city transport and pedestrian facilities.

This pedestrian way could be duplicated towards each end of the station, with each linked to the other in an H-shaped plan, with an extended low level access also to the old original Brunel Station, with its tracks replaced for new and extended electric services. Davina Elaine Hockin Portishead