I was thinking more of ambience than convenience!
I do take your point! Bus stations like Golders Green were designed and built in an age when all bus services were operated with a conductor and, in London at least, the buses themselves had no doors, indeed were not allowed to by the Met Police. So any bus parked at Golders Green Station, whether between trips or left there for another reason, could be boarded by passengers, immaterial of whether it was even the next departure on that particular route.
You could get a situation where four different 13 buses were laying over, not in any particular order, and two of them were going nowhere fast, one having been a 'staff cut' at Hendon Garage, whose changeover point it was, and another Hendon bus enjoying a long layover before being curtailed at Baker Street on its next journey. Add in buses from the 2,2A and 2B also sharing the road down to Oxford Street, and a 'free-for-all' occurred when a crew appeared from the canteen, human nature meaning that three of them on a mixture of those routes would often leave almost simultaneously. On one occasion at GG in the 1970s, with the former trolleybus route 260 on a Saturday 24 minute frequency to Hammersmith, only requiring a four bus allocation, three arrived together and, five minutes later, all left together! Having observed their running numbers, I opted for the one which appeared to be running closest to time as being the one most likely to get me to HB, but that was specialist knowledge denied to the general public.
So, what I'm saying in a roundabout way is that, in the past, seats/shelters and precise demarcation lines as to where buses stopped were not as important as they are now. Have to confess I've not been near GG this century so far so couldn't possibly comment as to facilities now.
