Spalding Solutions

[Legolash2o]

I've been reading a few articles recently about the issues the rail tracks are having around Spalding due to the amount of services and level crossings.

What are possible solutions to this? Move the track and station to edge of the town? Crazy expensive tunnel? New road bridges?

 

[Gloster]

Repair or replace the barrier lifting mechanisms so that they fail even less than they do at the moment, which isn’t often. (Three times in a couple of months?) However, you will always get motorists moaning if their journey is even briefly delayed, and local politicians who jump on the bandwagon and demand all sorts of things, as long as someone else pays.

 

[zwk500]

Moving the station out of town is a backwards step, as it'll make it harder to get the train without using the car. Tunnel and bridges are unlikely to be cost effective, unless you can make a housing developer cough up as part of their development. Maybe 1 or 2 of the level crossings could be closed, although that's unlikely to help the traffic situation. Best option is to build better cycle paths, including to nearby towns/villages, (this part of Lincolnshire must be more favourable than much of the country for that) to try and reduce people getting in the car at all.

 

[bramling]

I've been reading a few articles recently about the issues the rail tracks are having around Spalding due to the amount of services and level crossings.

What are possible solutions to this? Move the track and station to edge of the town? Crazy expensive tunnel? New road bridges?

Hard to think of any easy solution. Spalding is quite traffic-choked for its size, and like many Lincolnshire towns is heavily road-dominated with rail being virtually irrelevant. On top of that the local road network carries much through traffic. It possibly doesn’t help that Spalding has seen a fair amount of new housing which of course will only have exacerbated all this.

I just can’t see any case likely to be made for eliminating crossings due to the cost.

 

[Legolash2o]

And if cost wasn't an issue? Excluding tunneling under the town.

 

[zwk500]

And if cost wasn't an issue? Excluding tunneling under the town.

Purchase enough housing to build 2 or 3 road bridges and close every crossing. But it's simply not going to happen.

 

[bramling]

And if cost wasn't an issue? Excluding tunneling under the town.

You could bridge some of the crossings, but in most cases likely to require some property demolition I’d have thought, which is never going to be popular.

 

[30907]

A quick check of RTT for today 0600-2000 indicates about 20 freights on top of the approx hourly passengers. That's not anywhere near the busiest on the network (says a former resident of Cononley).

 

[Bald Rick]

You could bridge some of the crossings, but in most cases likely to require some property demolition I’d have thought, which is never going to be popular.

lots of property demolition.

 

[Mcr Warrior]

Hard to think of any easy solution. Spalding is quite traffic-choked for its size, and like many Lincolnshire towns is heavily road-dominated with rail being virtually irrelevant.

If that is correct, are you essentially then saying that only something as radical as complete line closure in the Spalding area would be sufficient to "solve" the problem?

 

[ashkeba]

Best option is to build better cycle paths, including to nearby towns/villages, (this part of Lincolnshire must be more favourable than much of the country for that) to try and reduce people getting in the car at all.

Spalding is one of the few places in the country to vote against more cycling and walking improvements last year, preferring to keep car access and parking, so I doubt they will cycle much.

 

[bramling]

If that is correct, are you essentially then saying that only something as radical as complete line closure in the Spalding area would be sufficient to "solve" the problem?

Quite possibly, yes. A few Sprinters per day is a drop in the ocean compared to the amount of car journeys which start from, finish at or pass through Spalding. A significant proportion of these journeys would be impossible to carry out by rail, at the very least without a major programme to re-open routes closed last century. Even then it would still be a drop in the ocean.

Lincolnshire is very car-oriented, the only vaguely significant rail flows are freight to/from Immingham, TPE’s Cleethorpes route (but still a fairly minor part of TPE as a whole), and perhaps some travel to/from Lincoln. Even Skegness is insignificant in the grand scheme of things.

If we consider that the lie of the land in Lincolnshire makes crossing to bridge conversions disproportionately difficult, these factors must surely combine to make the cost/benefit ratio challenging. Add in some moans about property demolition, and it seems fairly clear status quo will prevail.

Somewhere like Spalding is your classic town which serves as a focal point for a large rural area, for which car is the only viable means of transport. I suppose there might be the odd once-a-week bus service for those who really can’t use a car. Rail is no use for any of these people as either (1) their line will have long closed, (2) their local station will have long closed even if the line is still open, or (3) they never had a railway in the first place. Even on the line which is still open, there are numerous closed stations either side of Spalding, meanwhile there’s no fewer than four closed routes.

 

[XAM2175]

From a cursory glance at the map and overhead imaging I'm tempted to suggest that elevating the railway over the roads (and running on viaduct between the crossings) is the least-bothersome way of doing it. Then the station can either be rebuilt in the same place, but at the new track level.

Still far too much bother and money involved to actually justify doing it, naturally.

 

[snowball]

I gather a major use of the line is for freight that would have used the ECML if the capacity had been available (hence the Werrington underpass). If it was sufficiently important, a rail bypass of Spalding for freight could be built. Maybe about 5-6km would do it. That would leave just the passenger trains interfering with the road traffic.

 

[30907]

West of the railway appears to be largely housing, plus the road to Bourne and the A1, not a major through route. A southern or northern link road would deal with that traffic, while upgrading the existing footbridges to cycleways would be a healthy option for shoppers/commuters

 

[Doctor Fegg]

There's a relief road under construction which will have two new overbridges. That should be enough, surely? https://www.lincolnshire.gov.uk/major-projects/spalding-western-relief-road

(though @zwk500 is right in that improving cycling provision is a better solution)

 

[Blurb]

Quite possibly, yes. A few Sprinters per day is a drop in the ocean compared to the amount of car journeys which start from, finish at or pass through Spalding. A significant proportion of these journeys would be impossible to carry out by rail, at the very least without a major programme to re-open routes closed last century. Even then it would still be a drop in the ocean.

Lincolnshire is very car-oriented, the only vaguely significant rail flows are freight to/from Immingham, TPE’s Cleethorpes route (but still a fairly minor part of TPE as a whole), and perhaps some travel to/from Lincoln. Even Skegness is insignificant in the grand scheme of things.

If we consider that the lie of the land in Lincolnshire makes crossing to bridge conversions disproportionately difficult, these factors must surely combine to make the cost/benefit ratio challenging. Add in some moans about property demolition, and it seems fairly clear status quo will prevail.

Somewhere like Spalding is your classic town which serves as a focal point for a large rural area, for which car is the only viable means of transport. I suppose there might be the odd once-a-week bus service for those who really can’t use a car. Rail is no use for any of these people as either (1) their line will have long closed, (2) their local station will have long closed even if the line is still open, or (3) they never had a railway in the first place. Even on the line which is still open, there are numerous closed stations either side of Spalding, meanwhile there’s no fewer than four closed routes.

Although many of your points are correct, re: rail flows in Lincolnshire it’s perhaps worth pointing out that both Grantham and Stamford are in Lincs and have noticeable rail flows through/via/from (both freight and passenger).
Repalding - I don’t think there’s really a huge issue, more that the local rag keeps recycling the same story and getting quotes from the same people with axe to grind. There are level crossings, sometimes you have to wait - it’s not exactly Tallington.

 

[The exile]

Technology that means that crossings don’t close several
Minutes before a slow-moving train arrives would help

 

[Egg Centric]

How much is due to the A16? A bypass on eastern end looks useful in crayons terms although I have only been there to Spalding a couple of times and don't know it.

 

[30907]

How much is due to the A16? A bypass on eastern end looks useful in crayons terms although I have only been there to Spalding a couple of times and don't know it.

The A16 bypasses Spalding NE-SW. Looks as if the proposed relief road connects to the A16NE via an existing link road south of Pinchbeck.

 

[Dr Hoo]

Technology that means that crossings don’t close several
Minutes before a slow-moving train arrives would help

It's over 25 years since I lived in Spalding and the nature of the railway and its traffic patterns has changed out of all recognition since then.

As a matter of interest, what is the current set-up with signalling control, permanent speed restrictions and level crossings? I was vaguely assuming that the long intermodals would glide through a series of MCB-ODs quite expeditiously.