Worcester garage needs replacing, and had done for many years, but finding an alternative has proved difficult. As has who will pay for it?
Malvern garage became a supermarket, which has now gone and the site is the car park of a bigger one.
The site of Evesham garage is now offices, the one in Redditch town centre was going to become a night club, but passed to rival company Diamond Bus instead after change of use permission was denied.
Dudley garage went and the town by-pass goes over the site now, Oldbury has the '
One and two Halves' pub built over it's location, Cradley Heath is now a cycle shop and factory, original head office Bearwood became a supermarket decades ago, Carlyle Road Works is now a posh housing estate and the later head office Midland House in Vernon Road is now luxury apartments.
The old garages at Banbury, Hereford and Tamworth are still operational, but how long for? They are hardly suited to today's style of bus operation, and stand on valuable sites.
Kidderminster was demolished for the new town centre development and replaced with a new facility in the middle of a huge traffic island at the junction of Worcester and Stourport Roads, but I can't see cash coming forward for similar new premises, and the days of having roofed depots just to keep the buses dry at night are long over.
You don't pay rates on open yards, so roofed areas aren't financially viable. (Viz the new Digbeth Coach Station).
The great days of 'a service to the public' are almost gone too, like many other businesses public transport companies have to feed the pockets of the shareholders, and as the realization comes that much of that profit is from council subsidies, attitudes toward public money going to services that aren't provided efficiently will turn against them and the industry will decline even further.
