The Charles Street Transit Terminal is a former bus terminal in
Kitchener, Ontario
)
, image_flag = Flag of Kitchener, Ontario.svg
, image_seal = Seal of Kitchener, Canada.svg
, image_shield=Coat of arms of Kitchener, Canada.svg
, image_blank_emblem = Logo of Kitchener, Ontario.svg
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, Canada. It is the former downtown hub for local
Grand River Transit
Grand River Transit (GRT) is the public transport operator for the Regional Municipality of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. It operates daily bus services in the region, primarily in the cities of Kitchener, Waterloo, and Cambridge, alongside the I ...
(GRT) bus services for Kitchener and
Waterloo
Waterloo most commonly refers to:
* Battle of Waterloo, a battle on 18 June 1815 in which Napoleon met his final defeat
* Waterloo, Belgium, where the battle took place.
Waterloo may also refer to:
Other places
Antarctica
*King George Island (S ...
,
although the terminal now sits vacant and mostly abandoned.
It was the largest public service facility run by GRT, with the Cambridge
Ainslie Street terminal being the only other staffed bus station, as well as once serving a number of commuter and intercity bus routes with
GO Transit
GO Transit is a regional public transit system serving the Greater Golden Horseshoe region of Ontario, Canada. With its hub at Union Station in Toronto, GO Transit's green-and-white trains and buses serve a population of more than seven millio ...
, and
Coach Canada
Coach Canada is the Canadian affiliate of Coach USA.
Charter services (rental of bus with driver) when originating in most areas in Ontario can travel to anywhere in North America. Megabus operations however are confined to the provinces of Quebe ...
.
History
Terminal location
The terminal site is bounded by Charles, Gaukel, Joseph, and Ontario Streets in Kitchener's downtown core. However, earlier in the 20th century the site was considered to be on the edge of downtown. This changed in 1947, when the Bullas department store opened on the site as the anchor for the Bullas Building, a mixed-use building which at various times was used for residential, commercial, and industrial purposes. The Bullas brothers, Ross and Roy, had expanded to the site from an earlier location on Joseph Street which was used for their father's furniture storage and distribution business.
The move coincided with a wave of postwar prosperity and suburbanization which created a greater demand for fine home goods such as furniture and appliances from Kitchener's manufacturers, but which would ultimately undermine the downtown commercial area with the construction of suburban shopping malls like the
Fairview Park Mall
CF Fairview Park (commonly known as Fairview Park Mall) is a large shopping mall of 120 stores in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada, owned and managed by Cadillac Fairview. in the 1960s and 1970s.
At the time, Charles Street only ran as far east as Ontario Street, where it dead ended, and it was "little more than a lane".
The Bullas move resulted in the addition of
streetscape
Street photography (also sometimes called candid photography) is photography conducted for art or enquiry that features unmediated chance encounters and random incidents within public places. Although there is a difference between street and cand ...
amenities such as streetlights and a small plaza with an ornamental concrete fountain, the sculptures from which are now owned by the City of Kitchener and displayed at the
Centre in the Square several blocks to the northeast.
Pressure mounted from local groups advocating an extension of Charles Street, which included the Bullas brothers. By the late 1950s, Charles was extended to Benton Street through an intersection with Queen Street, creating irregular curves in an otherwise straight downtown street.
The extension was carved through a downtown block bounded by Ontario, King, Benton, and Church Streets, and led to a number of historic commercial buildings being razed. Ultimately it joined up Charles with Alma Street, the latter of which was incorporated into Charles Street. Subsequent widenings would devastate the old stretch of Alma Street (now Charles Street East) and create an auto-oriented landscape which proved advantageous for bus operations.
The terminal
The building, which was designed by the local modernist architect John Lingwood,
was completed in 1988 by the City of Kitchener, which operated
Kitchener Transit Kitchener may refer to:
People
* Earl Kitchener, a title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom
** Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener (1850–1916), British Field Marshal and 1st Earl Kitchener
** Henry Kitchener, 2nd Earl Kitchener (1846–1937 ...
, GRT's forerunner, at the time. It replaced a facility at Duke and Scott streets, which had become overcrowded. Ownership transferred to the
Region of Waterloo
The Regional Municipality of Waterloo (Waterloo Region or Region of Waterloo) is a metropolitan area of Southern Ontario, Canada. It contains the cities of Cambridge, Kitchener and Waterloo (KWC or Tri-Cities), and the townships of North Dumf ...
(the operator of GRT) on January 1, 2000, when Kitchener Transit and Cambridge Transit were merged.
In 2002, the Transfers Café moved into the terminal's restaurant location, which it occupied until the closure of the building.
Local bus service at the terminal ceased on June 24, 2019, with the launch of the
Ion rapid transit
Ion, stylized as ION, is an integrated public transportation network in the Regional Municipality of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada. It is operated by Keolis and is part of the Grand River Transit (GRT) system, partially replacing GRT's Route 200 i ...
system and reorganization of bus routes to feed the LRT. Road access to the terminal was limited to the first and last lanes, for intercity service and GO buses respectively. The remaining three lanes were barricaded using concrete walls.
On September 7, service to Toronto and intercity bus service from the station was terminated, making the terminal redundant. GO Transit and
Greyhound
The English Greyhound, or simply the Greyhound, is a breed of dog, a sighthound which has been bred for coursing, greyhound racing and hunting. Since the rise in large-scale adoption of retired racing Greyhounds, the breed has seen a resurge ...
were moved to curbside stops in the vicinity of the terminal, with the last roadways into and out of the facility blocked with barriers and the building itself locked.
The future of the terminal's site is unclear, although it will likely be sold, demolished and redeveloped. In the meantime, it remains owned by the Region, sitting abandoned. In late 2020, a
COVID-19
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by a virus, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The first known case was COVID-19 pandemic in Hubei, identified in Wuhan, China, in December ...
testing centre was established on the site by
Grand River Hospital
Grand River Hospital is a 665-bed hospital serving Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada, and surrounding communities, primarily through its KW and Freeport Sites, both located in Kitchener. The two sites were independent hospitals that merged to form ...
; testing is administered on the former platforms for drive-through patients while medical staff use the building to maintain supplies and keep warm in winter weather.
Public consultations on the fate of the property are set to begin in the autumn of 2021; no final decision is expected before mid-2022. A proposal by members of Kitchener's Land Back Camp to build an Indigenous community centre on the site inspired a documentary, ''Imaginings and Recollections'', after gaining support in a local petition and a design proposal from several architecture students at the University of Waterloo.
Facilities
![Charles Street Transit Terminal Kitchener Ontario April 2015](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0b/Charles_Street_Transit_Terminal_Kitchener_Ontario_April_2015.jpg)
When it provided GRT service, the main terminal building contained the ticket desk, plus washrooms and administrative space on the upper level; the lower level had a licensed restaurant and walk-in café, plus an ATM. Access between the floors was by escalator or elevator. Access to the bus platforms from the entry structure was by an enclosed, elevated walkway. Each of the two
island platform
An island platform (also center platform, centre platform) is a station layout arrangement where a single platform is positioned between two tracks within a railway station, tram stop or transitway interchange. Island platforms are popular on ...
groups have a 'pod' containing stairwells and an elevator, which also served as enclosed, climate-controlled waiting space for passengers, with a total of 20 bus stop locations.
Since the stop of GRT services, only a small interior space on the lower level served as a waiting area until the withdrawal of intercity bus service, when the entire building was closed to the public.
Future
![GRT CSC](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1f/GRT_CSC.jpg)
The Charles St. Terminal has become redundant due to the Region of Waterloo's ambitious transportation plans. With the implementation of a rapid-transit backbone which decentralized bus routes and required fewer platforms at a single downtown location taking effect on June 24, 2019, Grand River Transit buses no longer had a need to serve a central terminal as they now fed Ion stations directly.
In addition, the Region of Waterloo also plans to build a
multi-modal hub at King and Victoria streets (dubbed "Central Station") to handle train, bus, and rapid transit services. In addition to handling the need for regional and commuter buses, Central Station would also replace the
existing railway station. This hub does not yet have a firm date for completion, with 2022 being the earliest date available.
GRT customer service functions moved to a location at 105 King Street East in July 2019, where they will be served in the interim.
The LRT's
Victoria Park station serving southbound trains is located just across Gaukel Street from the terminal, and
Queen station
Queen is a subway station on Line 1 Yonge–University in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is located under Yonge Street north from Queen Street to Shuter Street. Wi-Fi service is available at this station.
History
Queen Station opened in 1954 a ...
sits two blocks south at Charles and Queen.
Kitchener City Hall station
Kitchener City Hall is a stop on the Region of Waterloo's Ion rapid transit system. It is located alongside Duke Street, just east of Young Street, in downtown Kitchener. Just west of the station is its namesake, Kitchener City Hall. It opened in ...
serves northbound traffic from four blocks away at Duke and Young.
Bus services
, the Grand River Transit website shows that no intercity buses use the Charles Street Transit Terminal. GO Transit buses stop at
Kitchener station
Kitchener station is a railway station located in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada, slightly to the northeast of downtown Kitchener, at 126 Weber Street West, near the corner of Victoria Street. It is a heritage building containing a waiting room and t ...
instead of the Charles Street Transit Terminal. Megabus (Coach Canada) has suspended bus service to Kitchener and Cambridge due to COVID-19.
In 2017, GO Transit used to serve a curbside stop on Queen Street South; where the entrance to the lane formerly serving their segment of the terminal had been blocked. The former GO services in 2017 were:
* 25 Waterloo/Mississauga GO Bus
service between
Square One Bus Terminal
Square One Bus Terminal is a GO Transit intercity bus terminal located in central Mississauga, Ontario, Canada. It is situated directly across Rathburn Road West from the Mississauga City Centre Transit Terminal (the main hub for local MiWay ...
and the
University of Waterloo
The University of Waterloo (UWaterloo, UW, or Waterloo) is a public research university with a main campus in Waterloo, Ontario
Waterloo is a city in the Canadian province of Ontario. It is one of three cities in the Regional Municipality ...
.
* 30 Kitchener/Bramalea GO Bus
service between
Kitchener GO Station
Kitchener station is a railway station located in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada, slightly to the northeast of downtown Kitchener, at 126 Weber Street West, near the corner of Victoria Street. It is a heritage building containing a waiting room and t ...
and the
Bramalea GO Station
Bramalea GO Station is a GO Transit railway and bus station along the Kitchener line in Brampton, Ontario, Canada. It is located at 1713 Steeles Avenue East, near the community of Bramalea at Steeles Ave. East and Bramalea Road.
Like many other ...
.
References
External links
Terminal platform layout from GRT
{{Kitchener, Ontario
Grand River Transit
Bus stations in Kitchener, Ontario
Transport infrastructure completed in 1988
Former bus stations
1988 establishments in Ontario
2019 disestablishments in Ontario