um ... i hate to break it to you, but our main bus mall is already right next to our greyhound station, which is right next to a bridge leading directly to an 1-5 on-ramp. how much better integrated could we be?

it's interesting to notice that these UK cities don't have their main highways (like the M25 mentioned) penetrating the city center -- you have to travel out to the edge of town to get on a freeway. here in the US we had the traumatic installation of the Interstate Highway System, which plunged through existing neighborhoods in almost every city it touched, in order to give us centralized on & off ramps.

insert dogmatic statements about freeways here, but that's what makes this article more applicable to England than to Portland.

"US we had the traumatic installation of the Interstate Highway System"

That's a very, VERY good way to phrase it.

The amount of money that immediately left the housing sector and private industry during the construction of the interstates was massive. Many cities are still desolate and even further desecrated because of the insertion of the interstates right through neighborhoods (which oft times are now ghettos), business districts, and other areas.

Emminent domain is EVIL if there where ever such a thing. ...but I wont' rant on that.

Matter of fact, if anyone has before and after photos of this great country's great city's during this traumatic time I'd love to get ahold of em'.

So far I've got some shots from:

New Orleans, LA
Memphis, TN
Jackson, MS

...but still wanna dig up some like Chicago, LA, San Fran, Portland (and I've seen some in the Portland Center Apartments and it is obviously devestating), and other cities.

The system the article describes - several intercity bus terminals on major highways, outside of town - is, in my experience, already pretty much the standard in developing-nation megalopolises where buses carry the lion's share of intercity passenger traffic.

As I recall, Bangkok has different bus terminals if you're going north, south, or east from the city; each is on it's corresponding side of the urban area. Jakarta has one for central and eastern Java, and a different one for Sumatra.

Given that we do have the central-city freeways, though, I'm inclined to keep our bus terminals central, where they're well-served by local transport from multiple directions. The direct highway-to-bus-terminal connections in NYC and SF are great and should be more common.