I’ve just thrown up a post on my personal blog about a new development around Coventry Railway station, which really should include a proper multi-modal interchange between bus, taxi and rail. Sadly, Coventry Airport does not look like it will offer any passenger flights in the near future, but any scheme which improves bus access to Coventry Station will also mean better access to Birmingham Airport, which is just 10 minutes by train from Coventry.

Thinking around Europe, and particularly to countries like Switzerland, the Netherlands and Germany, it is easy to praise their public transport systems for being efficient and integrated. Such a dream might not seem so easy with so many different bus and train operators plying for trade, but what has this current government achieved in its 12 years of promising to bring more integrated transport? Putting my Conservative, profit driven thinking cap on, surely any opportunity to combine transport modes, increase property values and open up new development land should be grabbed before it is too late.

One such scheme is happening right here in Coventry, under the brand name of ‘Friar Gate’. The design seems generally quite reasonable, but couldn’t it be so much more exciting if they rebranded it as “Cov Central”, and made it totally accessible from any part of the city by bike, bus, car or train? Such a scheme might be a little bit more bold than the current one, but it would at least provide a chance to connect everything together, something which could be such a symbolic gesture in this City of Peace and Reconciliation.

And the bonus? Good bye Pool Meadow – a dingy, ugly and badly designed bus station which merits no Architectural distinction whatsoever. It might inconvenience the Gala bingo players a little, but it would bring a much greater prize to the rest of the city.

I hope my references here can be of interest to people who have no connection with the city of Coventry, although you are probably quite small in number! Coventry started the whole twinning junket, and we’re now linked with some 23 cities around the world. You can also fly over Coventry in an instant using Google maps – our city centre really is quite compact – but still big enough for the distance between bus and train stations to be a major disabling factor in encouraging more people to use public transport.