A bus station or a bus interchange is a structure where city buses or intercity buses stop to pick up and drop off passengers. While the term bus depot can also be used to refer to a bus station, it can also refer to a bus garage . A bus station is larger than a bus stop , which is usually simply a place on the roadside, where buses can stop. It may be intended as a terminal station for a number of routes, or as a transfer station where the routes continue.
29-711: The Toronto Coach Terminal is a decommissioned bus station for intercity bus services in Toronto , Ontario, Canada. The building was the central intercity bus station in Toronto until mid-2021, when it was replaced by the Union Station Bus Terminal . It is located at 610 Bay Street , in the city's downtown . Opened in 1931 as the Gray Coach Terminal, the Art Deco style structure was
58-565: A commission in addition to platform fees charged to the coach companies. The lease, which was last renewed for a year in 2020, expired on July 7, 2021. In April 2017, TTC staff proposed for the terminal to be declared surplus when Coach Canada and Greyhound Canada vacated the terminal. The board of the TCTI on June 16, 2021 voted to accept a recommendation to transfer the property to the City of Toronto, effective July 8, 2021, in exchange for payment by
87-834: A dynamic passenger information system. The latter requires fewer platforms, but does not provide consistent locations for passengers. Kilambakkam bus terminus in Chennai is spread over an area of 358,200 square metres (88.52 acres), making it the largest bus station in the world. The Woodlands Bus Interchange in Singapore is one of the busiest bus interchanges in the world, handling up to 400,000 passengers daily across 42 bus services. Other Singaporean bus interchanges such as Bedok Bus Interchange , Tampines Bus Interchange and Yishun Bus Interchange handle similar number of passengers daily. The largest underground bus station in Europe
116-577: A new terminal in the then under-construction CIBC Square office development located at 81 Bay Street and move the bus lines that serviced the coach terminal there. This new terminal opened in December 2020. Greyhound Canada suspended service in May 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic , and announced on May 13, 2021, that they were permanently ending Canadian operations. Coach Canada / Megabus relocated to
145-406: A paramedics hub, and new public plaza. Two towers are to be built and will include residential, retail and public space. The residential component is to consist of 873 homes, 290 of which will be affordable rental units. There is to be "adaptive reuse of the existing heritage building as well as streetscape improvements", and the project is to include an organ repair centre for transplants, operated by
174-710: A permanent terminal building began in July 1931. The building officially opened on December 19, 1931 as the Toronto Motor Coach Terminal, to serve as the terminal hub for the Toronto Transit Commission 's (TTC) Gray Coach intercity bus service, replacing an open air terminal that had operated at the same location. Known as the Gray Coach Terminal until 1990, the Art Deco building is a two-storey historic building with Travertine limestone. Designed by architect Charles B. Dolphin it
203-479: A plan to redevelop the site into a mixed-income, mixed-use development that includes affordable housing, and a paramedics multi-hub, and office spaces for the life science and biomedical sectors. According to Vic Gupta, CEO of CreateTO , the city's real estate arm, "approximately 750 homes could be included in these sites with approximately 250 being affordable homes.” Create TO announced in November 2022 that it
232-485: A wholly owned subsidiary of the TTC. The TTC managed the station directly until July 8, 2012, when it was leased out in its entirety to bus lines Coach Canada and Greyhound Canada for CA$ 1.2 million annually, in what was initially a five-year contract. As a result, the coach lines took over the operational control of the terminal and opened their own ticket booths, where previously TTC employees had handled ticket sales and taken
261-600: Is Kamppi Centre in Helsinki, Finland completed in 2006. The terminal cost 100 million Euro to complete and took 3 years to design and build. Today, the bus terminal, which covers 25,000 square meters, is the busiest bus terminal in Finland. Every day, the terminal has around 700 bus departures, transporting approximately 170,000 passengers. Preston Bus Station in Preston, England, built in 1969 and later heritage-listed ,
290-409: Is seeking bids from developers. In June 2023, CreateTO announced its shortlist of bidders submitting proposals to redevelop 610 Bay Street and 130 Elizabeth Street: On November 21, 2024, Mayor Olivia Chow announced that the site, including both the former Bay Street and Elizabeth Street terminals, would be redeveloped as a mixed-income, mixed-use development that is to include affordable housing,
319-438: Is underutilized, "with an opportunity to unlock value and address City needs and City building objectives, such as affordable housing, employment uses and community infrastructure." Despite its age, the structure is only a "listed property" in the City's Heritage Register, offering a 60 day window that the property owner has to notify the City before moving or demolishing the structure. In April 2022, Toronto City Council approved
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#1732780613194348-735: The Lincoln Tunnel and one block west of Times Square . The terminal is the largest in the Western Hemisphere and the busiest in the world by volume of traffic, serving about 8,000 buses and 225,000 people on an average weekday and more than 65 million people a year. It has 223 gates. It operates intercity bus routes all over the United States and some routes with international destinations, mostly in Canada, and mostly operated by Greyhound Lines. The largest bus terminal in
377-496: The University Health Network , and housing options for health workers. Kilmer Group and Tricon Residential (Kilmer-Tricon) were announced by the city and CreateTO as the developers. The terminal was originally owned by Gray Coach Lines when it was a Toronto Transit Commission subsidiary. When the TTC sold Gray Coach in 1990, it retained the terminal, transferring ownership to Toronto Coach Terminal Inc. (TCTI),
406-499: The Elizabeth Street Terminal also began handling arrivals for the main terminal's bus lines with departures leaving from the main coach terminal across the street, which is rather unusual for bus terminals or other passenger transportation infrastructure. Through the 1990s, GO Transit bus services gradually relocated to Toronto Union Station , first to seven curb-side bus stops along Front Street in front of
435-411: The city of CA$ 4.2 million so that TCTI could pay back the balance of a loan made to TCTI by the TTC when TCTI was created in 1990. The Toronto Coach Terminal is located one block west of Dundas subway station and was connected to it via the underground PATH network. It is also about the same distance from St. Patrick subway station . The bus platforms are located on Edward Street, on the west side of
464-454: The main floor was removed and replaced by an upstairs restaurant and bar seating 150, with railings overlooking main floor enclosed with glass. The restaurant was unable to attract enough passengers to sustain itself and the vendor instead was given space to run a snack bar on the main floor and a passenger lounge and bar in the basement, leaving the upstairs area to be converted to office space. An enclosed pedestrian walkway, with lockers lining
493-658: The main hub for Gray Coach , an interurban coach service then owned by the Toronto Transportation Commission (later renamed the Toronto Transit Commission ) (TTC). It replaced an earlier open air depot, the Union Coach Terminal. In 1927, the TTC signed a contract with Trinity College leasing a parcel of land at Bay and Edward Streets for an open air coach terminal. After purchasing the Bay/Edward property, construction on
522-527: The main terminal building occurred in 1990, tripled the main terminal's floor space to 2,500 square metres, creating more seating for waiting passengers (250 seats rather than 100). This was done by demolishing the interior wall separating the main building from the bus bays and replacing it with a glass wall several metres to the west, reducing the space allotted for bus bays. The bus shed is configured into seven lanes, with room for two buses in each lane. The 40-seat lunch counter -style restaurant which had been on
551-570: The new Union Station Bus Terminal , effective June 8, 2021. Ontario Northland Motor Coach Services , the last remaining bus line that used the Toronto Coach Terminal, relocated to Union Station effective July 4, 2021, bringing the Toronto Coach Terminal's role as a bus depot to a close after almost 90 years of service. On October 29, 2019, Toronto City Council identified the Bay and Elizabeth Street terminal properties as an asset that
580-489: The railway station, and then to the original Union Station Bus Terminal on Front Street, across Bay Street from the rail terminal. GO's Toronto to Hamilton Express bus route was the last to use the Elizabeth Street Terminal until Labour Day weekend of 2002 when it moved to the original Union Station Bus Terminal on Front Street. After the departure of GO Transit, the Elizabeth Street terminal only handled arrivals for
609-446: The remaining bus lines. The bus bays on the south side of the building were decommissioned and the area converted into a Green P paid parking lot . The waiting area and newsstand in the Elizabeth Street Terminal were closed in 2010 with only the bus platform on the north of the building remaining open to the public for bus arrivals. Due to limited space, buses would park overnight along Edward Street and Chestnut Street. A renovation of
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#1732780613194638-520: The renovation, a tunnel was built under Bay Street at the cost of CA$ 4 million connecting the main terminal to the Atrium on Bay and, through it, to Dundas subway station as well as to the PATH network . A newspaper stand was located in the basement along with, over various years, a shoeshine stand (in earlier decades), a travellers' lounge called Kramden's Kafe (after it moved from its original location as
667-475: The south wall, was built on the south side of the bus shed connecting the main terminal building with Elizabeth Street allowing passengers to walk from the main building to Elizabeth Street, and then cross the street to the Elizabeth terminal, without having to walk through the bus bays in the main terminal. The dispatch office is located along the west wall of the terminal, overlooking the bus bays. As part of
696-583: The southern hemisphere is the Tietê Bus Terminal located in São Paulo, Brazil. It is also the 2nd busiest in the world, serving about 90,000 people per weekday in 300 bus lines on its 89 platforms (72 for boarding and 17 for deboarding), with services to over 1,000 cities over the country and South America . The terminal is also linked to Portuguesa-Tietê , an adjacent metro station. Locker Too Many Requests If you report this error to
725-834: The terminal building. A small side entrance on the west side of Elizabeth Street is connected to the main concourse area on Bay Street by a corridor behind the bus platforms. Nearby landmarks include the Toronto Eaton Centre , the Atrium on Bay, the Hospital for Sick Children , and the Toronto City Hall and Nathan Phillips Square . It is also within walking distance of Chinatown . [REDACTED] Media related to Toronto Coach Terminal at Wikimedia Commons Bus station Bus station platforms may be assigned to fixed bus lines, or variable in combination with
754-524: The upstairs restaurant) serving snacks and alcohol and equipped with a pool table , and finally a bakery. In 2012, the coach terminal's board proposed that a new facility be built at the terminal's current location combining the original terminal and the Elizabeth Street annex into one structure that could fit double the current number of bus bays. However, in September 2014 Metrolinx announced plans to relocate its GO Transit Union Station Bus Terminal to
783-417: The west of the main terminal. It was originally built in 1968 and was used for bus charters and sightseeing buses and, beginning in 1970, was a hub for GO Transit bus arrivals and departures. Five diagonal bus bays on its south side were used for departures and the north side of the building opening onto a covered two-lane driveway acting as an unloading area and space for bus layovers and parking. In 1990,
812-670: Was described in 2014 as "depending on how you measure it, the largest bus station in the world, the second-biggest in Europe, and the longest in Europe". It was fully refurbished in 2018. The largest bus terminal in North America is the Port Authority Bus Terminal located in New York City. The terminal is located in Midtown at 625 Eighth Avenue between 40th Street and 42nd Street, one block east of
841-458: Was originally built with five platforms (four departure and one arrival platform) and later expanded to nine bus platforms. Its final form consisted of seven bus platforms, accommodating two numbered bus bays each. The building has been listed in the City of Toronto 's heritage buildings register since May 19, 1987. An annex, the Elizabeth Street Terminal located at 130 Elizabeth Street, is located to
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