SWR to withdraw public access to Guildford Station Footbridge

Oldgaloot said:

I can now answer a question I asked here some time back: anyone know how long there's been a route from Walnut Tree Close to Guildford Park Road via the station bridge?

Well, Network Rail has now made a formal application to bring the pedestrian access to an end. It's on the GBC website at 86/P/01712/S106/1. There are numerous responses, the majority of which are opposed to the change, and one of which is from a lady who has lived in Guildford for 50 years and has always used this route through the station to go into the town.

The support appears to come largely from employees of SWR or NR or one of their agency worker providers. They all seem to have read the same articles from Surrey Live in 2023/4.

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Watershed said:

The application is here on Guildford Borough Council's planning portal. I've attached the documents for posterity (I had to split the original section 52 agreement with BR into two documents to upload it).

It sounds like this is basically a rubber stamping exercise, since the attached letter states:


Not very transparent of them to conduct such conversations behind closed doors.


If it's anything like the road bridge at Crewe (and it looks that way on Google Street View), I'm rather glad I won't be affected by this. Narrow, nothing separating the traffic from you, barely wide enough for 2 people to pass each other. Sounds lovely!

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Recessio said:

The bridge route has been there I think since the station buildings were last rebuilt in the 1980s.

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stuving said:

Apparently the name "passameter" was used at Guildford for that ticket office and by some for that entrance even after the original passimeter was removed.

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• SWR considered introducing local residents' passes at one point before the closure trial. It's unclear why this option was not progressed further as it seems a sensible way of addressing the key issues
• Despite external communications suggesting they were merely gathering data to decide on the next steps, SWR had already decided they want to close the bridge to the public permanently and just used the trial to gather the data they hoped would justify this

Watershed said:

Guildford council have responded to an FoI request someone made with 200+ pages of correspondence, both internal and with Network Rail and SWR, regarding this application.

From a quick skim read through, I don't think there are any huge revelations but there are some interesting tidbits:

• SWR considered introducing local residents' passes at one point before the closure trial. It's unclear why this option was not progressed further as it seems a sensible way of addressing the key issues
• Despite external communications suggesting they were merely gathering data to decide on the next steps, SWR had already decided they want to close the bridge to the public permanently and just used the trial to gather the data they hoped would justify this

Something else I hadn't noticed before, when reading through the supporting documents which Network Rail provided for the application, it that the temporary closure had much less effect on fare evasion than they are claiming.

The table below has some seriously dodgy statistics, including comparing each type of irregularity individually instead of comparing the total number of irregularities. An irregularity can be dealt with in different ways purely depending on the member of staff encountered (e.g. whether they're a guard or RPI):
View attachment 209194

In the 4 months before the trial, the total number of irregularities was 536. In the 4 months after, it was 477. They try to claim that the number of irregularities was 42-50% lower during the closure trial, but that is nonsense because they are comparing a 3 month trial with 4 month periods either side.

The 321 irregularities reported during the trial are equivalent to 428 if extrapolated to 4 months. Which is only 10% less than in the 4 months after the closure, and 20% less than the 4 months before.

When you consider the fact that the closure included some of the quietest times of year for rail travel (Christmas and New Year) it hardly seems like the closure had much impact at all - which is the opposite of what they're claiming with their (mis)interpretation of the data.

We also have no data on the number of days where there were blockades during each of those periods. If there were fewer blockades during the trial - perhaps because they thought they deploy their RPIs elsewhere with the bridge problem temporarily 'solved' - then that would also explain a reduction in irregularities.

Furthermore they haven't provided any statistics on the difference in the number of tickets bought to London Road (an obvious short faring destination) or any difference in footfall at London Road (the nearest unbarriered station).

There's lies, damned lies and statistics, as the saying goes...

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