Given the station proximity to the new junction on the M9, could this not be a major park and ride opportunity for commuters into Edinburgh?
Travelling across central Scotland it strikes me how full every station car park is. My nearby station at Croy has a car park with almost 1,000 spaces and it is overflowing Mon to Thu. This indicates pent up demand for rail travel and perhaps some empty seats could be filled before trains themselves get overloaded.
It's a bit more complex, but yes, there is that risk.
The modelled demand for services in and out of Edinburgh is mad. Prior to COVID, we were modelling Waverley at reaching 42m pax per annum by about 2040. Obviously, that number has changed a little, but in some ways it's worse: numbers are expected to peak more significantly in May through August, and in December, and it's expected that a resumption of 4tph on the E&G fasts will be needed by 2030.
Edinburgh is growing phenomenally fast, and it's not unlikely that expanding park and ride facilities will be needed at several stations around the city in coming years, notably Uphall, Wallyford and Eskbank, in the style of the multistorey car parks of the southern WCML.
The problem with such projects, including building an enormous new car park at Winchburgh, is induced demand, and demand shifting.
If we build enormous car parks at stations along the lines into Edinburgh, we build them next to motorways, for easy access. It's likely therefore that some people who would previously have driven to their closest station, will now drive a bit further to one of these new car parks, because the longer distance will be balanced by what feels like a faster journey along a motorway rather than local roads, and the shorter journey time into the city on the train. People from Bo'ness who had previously driven to Linlithgow, now drive to Winchburgh, and so on.
That's actually a bad thing for the line, because it bunches up demand onto very short sections of line that quickly become overcrowded. It's bad for the local users, because those car parks and stations become exponentially busier. It's bad for longer distance drivers, because motorways and junctions become much busier at certain times of day. Finally, it's very bad for Transport Scotland, because you've resulted in a net increase in road miles, mostly in single occupant vehicles, and a net decrease in rail revenue, because people are taking, on average, shorter journeys.
Building park and ride facilities is a very complicated issue, and it needs to be done right. We can model new demand very well, but we can't actually model shifting demand all that well at all, because it depends mostly on psychology of the individual commuters, and what they feel is the best journey for them.
It's why there's been such a shift towards bike storage at new stations; yes it's cheaper to build, and it's better for the planet and for local communities if people cycle, but also if you can embed cycling locally, you can encourage people to use their local station, and therefore, you can model and spread out demand much more easily.
www.dailyrecord.co.uk
