Kirkstall Forge & Apperley Bridge

[Deerfold]

A rather disappointing update.

Kirkstall Forge seems to have slipped to August 2015, commuting to/from Bradford won't be realistic as it'll be a Bradford service that stops in one direction and an Ilkley service in the other. A disappointing 1 tph of the 6-8 passing. Thought I'd seen before that this would be 2tph.

Nothing on Apperley Bridge.

http://www.westyorks-ca.gov.uk/WorkArea/DownloadAsset.aspx?id=4294967867

2.46 The station is expected to be open in August 2015 and initially will be served by 1
train per hour in each direction; additional stops on the Leeds – Bradford Forster
Square service (westbound) and the Ilkley – Leeds service (eastbound). The station
will include a new footbridge and lifts, and a 127 space car park.

 

[43367]

All this talk of new stations and public consultations that cost millions even before a station is approved or in some cases millions wasted because it has been decided that it won't be popular, so why don't they build a temporary structure i.e. like the did on the Workington branch after severe flooding in 2010 I believe it was, and give it say a years' trial and if it does prove popular or a success then build a more permanent station, if not then dismantle it and move it to another trial area, they could even use a station structure such at the Leeds Whiteall station that was built in 2000 when Leeds was being modernised.

I know they may be a problem with no car parking facilities or even access problems but that that could be solved in a number of ways i.e. a park and ride scheme, and if the station does get the go ahead then a car park would be included.

I think this way is cheaper and quicker than going through all the consultations and different stages that seem to cost the projects more by lining "consultants" pockets.

 

[Starmill]

A rather disappointing update.

Kirkstall Forge seems to have slipped to August 2015, commuting to/from Bradford won't be realistic as it'll be a Bradford service that stops in one direction and an Ilkley service in the other. A disappointing 1 tph of the 6-8 passing. Thought I'd seen before that this would be 2tph.

Nothing on Apperley Bridge.

http://www.westyorks-ca.gov.uk/WorkArea/DownloadAsset.aspx?id=4294967867

No trains to Apperley Bridge from Bradford or the Airedale line? Riiiiiiiiiight...

Oh well, I guess Kirkstall - Wharefedale and Airdale/Bradford - Kirkstall tickets will be accepted via Leeds

 

[deltic08]

No trains to Apperley Bridge from Bradford or the Airedale line? Riiiiiiiiiight...

Oh well, I guess Kirkstall - Wharefedale and Airdale/Bradford - Kirkstall tickets will be accepted via Leeds

Absolutely barking. Not enough capacity on such a busy line for 2tph stopping at both stations. **** ups and breweries yet again regarding planners. It has only taken a decade to get to this point. A development in east Leeds of 7,000 homes near Scholes desperately needs two miles of the Cross Gates-Wetherby line reinstating but Leeds City Council wont hear of it yet plan a station at Kirkstall Forge for less than 1,000 homes

 

[bluenoxid]

A rather disappointing update.

Kirkstall Forge seems to have slipped to August 2015, commuting to/from Bradford won't be realistic as it'll be a Bradford service that stops in one direction and an Ilkley service in the other. A disappointing 1 tph of the 6-8 passing. Thought I'd seen before that this would be 2tph.

Nothing on Apperley Bridge.

http://www.westyorks-ca.gov.uk/WorkArea/DownloadAsset.aspx?id=4294967867

I am a little confused. I cannot see your comments in the document you link to.

 

[Grumpy]

A rather disappointing update.

Kirkstall Forge seems to have slipped to August 2015, commuting to/from Bradford won't be realistic as it'll be a Bradford service that stops in one direction and an Ilkley service in the other. A disappointing 1 tph of the 6-8 passing. Thought I'd seen before that this would be 2tph.

Nothing on Apperley Bridge.

http://www.westyorks-ca.gov.uk/WorkArea/DownloadAsset.aspx?id=4294967867

There's no sign of any work starting on the commercial/residential developments proposed for Kirkstall Forge.
Meanwhile the houses continue to spring up around the Calverley site.
Stopping anything at Kirkstall is going to be a pain-the existing trains must be doing 80 ish there at present so we are looking at a 5 minute time penalty for stopping there. Giving that the Ilkley trains will be pretty crammed by the time they get there(at least in the peak), it's difficult to see one train/hour and no seats being a winner.

I had assumed the Leeds-Bradford trains would be the ones to stop in order to give a service to the major centres. Change at Shipley for anywhere else. Ilkley and Shipley/Skipton would keep their fast services. The Leeds-Bradford service is surely just a means of providing relief to the Leeds-Skiptons as far as Shipley.

 

[BantamMenace]

Operationally surely an all or nothing policy would be the easiest. I'd stop both Ilkley and both Bradford services each hour. Another huge bonus would be for the Carlisle and Morecambe trains to go 1tp2h in alternate hours leaving Leeds at exactly X minutes past each hour every hour. These could also stop at the new stations as well as all other Airedale stations as they're not very time critical services.

 

[Deerfold]

I am a little confused. I cannot see your comments in the document you link to.

Apologies - try this one:

http://www.westyorks-ca.gov.uk/WorkArea/DownloadAsset.aspx?id=4294967865

The links are easy to mix up as the document name handily isn't in the link...

 

[Starmill]

Operationally surely an all or nothing policy would be the easiest. I'd stop both Ilkley and both Bradford services each hour. Another huge bonus would be for the Carlisle and Morecambe trains to go 1tp2h in alternate hours leaving Leeds at exactly X minutes past each hour every hour. These could also stop at the new stations as well as all other Airedale stations as they're not very time critical services.

I'd be very very surprised if there were stock and capacity for a 2 hourly service on the Bentham line! But this would work in the context of S+C, I feel. Maybe split/attach at Hellifeld. Something for the next franchise though...

 

[Deerfold]

Operationally surely an all or nothing policy would be the easiest. I'd stop both Ilkley and both Bradford services each hour. Another huge bonus would be for the Carlisle and Morecambe trains to go 1tp2h in alternate hours leaving Leeds at exactly X minutes past each hour every hour. These could also stop at the new stations as well as all other Airedale stations as they're not very time critical services.

The Calisle and Morecambe trains already miss out several stations - the trains have a decent top speed but poor acceleration so if they make additional stops they won't be out of the way of the next electric train.

 

[BantamMenace]

I'd be very very surprised if there were stock and capacity for a 2 hourly service on the Bentham line! But this would work in the context of S+C, I feel. Maybe split/attach at Hellifeld. Something for the next franchise though...

It isn't all that far from 2 hourly currently. I use it very regularly as I'm a Lancaster student from the aire valley.

Surely attaching and detaching at Hellifield leaves the likes of gargrave with a 2 hourly service where it currently has almost hourly.

I think the ideal solution would be to have a huge private sector investment in new houses around Hellifield. This coupled with the extension of electrification to hellifield thus turning hellifield into the new Skipton but with 2 trains per hour to Leeds and Bradford with a journey time around an hour. Not to mention future upgrades could bring hellifield within an hour of Manchester. Solves a couple of birds with one rock leaving a few rocks for the inevitable nimbys.

 

[Starmill]

It isn't all that far from 2 hourly currently. I use it very regularly as I'm a Lancaster student from the aire valley.

For a regular 2-hourly service, I'd say at least 8tpd are needed. The Bentham line currently has 5.

The S+C has 7 - one of which calls only at Settle, Kirkby Stephen and Appleby, plus the evening trip to Ribblehead.

Gargrave has 9 one way and 8 the other (i.e. it has an uneven 2 hourly service at present). For an hourly service I'd say you need between 15 and 18 trains a day.

 

[34D]

When the talk of a kirkstall service first happened (1980s) I had assumed that it would be built by the loops. This is not the case, as the location is a mile west of them.

 

[quantinghome]

A rather disappointing update.

Kirkstall Forge seems to have slipped to August 2015, commuting to/from Bradford won't be realistic as it'll be a Bradford service that stops in one direction and an Ilkley service in the other. A disappointing 1 tph of the 6-8 passing. Thought I'd seen before that this would be 2tph.

Nothing on Apperley Bridge.

http://www.westyorks-ca.gov.uk/WorkArea/DownloadAsset.aspx?id=4294967867

I think the key word here is 'initially'. This looks like a stop-gap measure, rather than being the final word on the matter. Nevertheless, disappointing it can't be worked out better given the time it has taken to plan. Presumably there are rolling stock / timetabling issues which need to be worked out before a sensible stopping pattern is introduced.

 

[Deerfold]

I think the key word here is 'initially'. This looks like a stop-gap measure, rather than being the final word on the matter. Nevertheless, disappointing it can't be worked out better given the time it has taken to plan. Presumably there are rolling stock / timetabling issues which need to be worked out before a sensible stopping pattern is introduced.

It's odd as every other reference I've seen has been to 2 tph - and I'm worried people will see the blurb about the new station, see it's a crap timetable and not bother looking again as it'll be trickier to generate the same amount of publicity for a frequency increase.

 

[davetheguard]

I've just been re-reading Martin Bairstowe's "Railways through Airedale & Wharfedale" (ISBN 1-871944-28-7).

In it, he mentions that it was back in 1999(!) that the West Yorkshire PTE identified Apperley Bridge and Kirstall Forge as priorities for (re)opening as soon as possible.

Jump forward fifteen years, and the builders still haven't arrived on site to carry out the relatively quick and simple task of actually building the things. Let's hope if and when that happens sometime soon, they don't discover bats, or newts, or nesting birds, or lesser-spotted NIMBYS occupying the lineside to cause more delays.

Seriously though, I would have to give serious thought to voting for any political party that promised to remove some of the current myriad of hoops that worthwhile schemes like this have to jump through; and that properly funded them too, so that Councils didn't have to spend vast sums of money on GRIP this and GRIP that, up front.

Infrastructure improvements in the UK just take much, much, too long. Sixteen years to re-open a couple of stations: it can't be right can it?

 

[Deerfold]

I've just been re-reading Martin Bairstowe's "Railways through Airedale & Wharfedale" (ISBN 1-871944-28-7).

In it, he mentions that it was back in 1999(!) that the West Yorkshire PTE identified Apperley Bridge and Kirstall Forge as priorities for (re)opening as soon as possible.

Jump forward fifteen years, and the builders still haven't arrived on site to carry out the relatively quick and simple task of actually building the things. Let's hope if and when that happens sometime soon, they don't discover bats, or newts, or nesting birds, or lesser-spotted NIMBYS occupying the lineside to cause more delays.

Seriously though, I would have to give serious thought to voting for any political party that promised to remove some of the current myriad of hoops that worthwhile schemes like this have to jump through; and that properly funded them too, so that Councils didn't have to spend vast sums of money on GRIP this and GRIP that, up front.

Infrastructure improvements in the UK just take much, much, too long. Sixteen years to re-open a couple of stations: it can't be right can it?

I remember being at school in the mid-eighties in West Yorkshire and every time the new rail timetable came out looking to see if any new stations had been added to the map and were due to open that year.

 

[davetheguard]

I remember being at school in the mid-eighties in West Yorkshire and every time the new rail timetable came out looking to see if any new stations had been added to the map and were due to open that year.

Yes, I can remember all those PTE-funded station re-openings of the time, too. Four between Skipton & Shipley alone! They were cheap & they were quick.

However, I'm certainly NOT arguing for a return to the practice of building stations without disabled access as we did then. And I like properly constructed platforms rather than wooden ones. But I just think the funding and the bureaucracy needs to be sorted out if we can, so that schemes don't keep dragging on and on.

And these two stations may not be the worst at 15 years and counting. Any suggestions for any worse examples? Kenilworth, anyone?

 

[Darren R]

And these two stations [Apperley Bridge and Kirkstall Forge] may not be the worst at 15 years and counting. Any suggestions for any worse examples? Kenilworth, anyone?

I see your Kenilworth and raise you Horsforth Woodside! The idea of a new station there has been kicking around for at least thirty years.

 

[61653 HTAFC]

Sorry for the thread bump, but I passed the sites of both stations last week and there was no sign of any building work or even site preparation... That 15 years is going to get closer to 20! :roll:

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

I see your Kenilworth and raise you Horsforth Woodside! The idea of a new station there has been kicking around for at least thirty years.

Thirty years is nothing considering the previous railway station there was closed 150 years ago in 1864...:roll:

 

[swt_passenger]

Thirty years is nothing considering the previous railway station there was closed 150 years ago in 1864...:roll:

As James Cook (University Hospital) station showed though, you can go from nothing seen at all in Jan 2014, to 95% finished and usable in May 2014.

IIRC Stratford on Avon Parkway was only a few months start to finish.

 

[quantinghome]

The delays with Kirkstall Forge and Apperley Bridge are entirely down to funding issues. The GRIP process is not to blame - it's a standard design process (feasibility, option selection, outline design, detailed design, construction, commissioning) and can be run through pretty quickly when needed - Todmorden Curve is a good example (although the rolling stock there is a different matter).

The problem is that local councils are obliged to get central government funding for even basic projects like suburban railway stations. So projects get put on hold and resurrected depending on the economic situation and other political issues outside the local council's control. It's interesting to compare the situation now to 100 years ago when local corporations were able to finance construction of extensive tram systems themselves.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

The delays with Kirkstall Forge and Apperley Bridge are entirely down to funding issues. The GRIP process is not to blame - it's a standard design process (feasibility, option selection, outline design, detailed design, construction, commissioning) and can be run through pretty quickly when needed - Todmorden Curve is a good example (although the rolling stock there is a different matter).

The Todmorden Chord scheme must be looked at a different light than those two railway stations that you describe as subject to funding issues above. The Burnley Council-led successful bid scheme was for monies from the Regional Growth Fund for both the improvement works to the Weavers Triangle at Burnley and for the reinstatement of the Todmorden Chord, both of which were to aid the area of East Lancashire in terms of reinvigoration.

 

[61653 HTAFC]

The Todmorden Chord scheme must be looked at a different light than those two railway stations that you describe as subject to funding issues above. The Burnley Council-led successful bid scheme was for monies from the Regional Growth Fund for both the improvement works to the Weavers Triangle at Burnley and for the reinstatement of the Todmorden Chord, both of which were to aid the area of East Lancashire in terms of reinvigoration.

Not to mention the added complication of the chord itself being located in the borough of Calderdale in West Yorkshire, but the funding being applied for by a consortium of local governments in East Lancashire!

 

[Grumpy]

Someone was telling me today that Apperley Lane has been a shambles recently with roadworks in connection with utility supplies to the new site.

 

[Oswyntail]

Apparently, the contracts for the construction of both stations was actually signed yesterday (No evidence other than talking to a design engineer who is involved)

 

[davetheguard]

Apparently, the contracts for the construction of both stations was actually signed yesterday (No evidence other than talking to a design engineer who is involved)

Any sign of anything happening on site at Kirkstall Forge or Apperley Bridge yet?

 

[Grumpy]

Any sign of anything happening on site at Kirkstall Forge or Apperley Bridge yet?

Drove past Apperley this morning, nothing obvious to be seen from the road.
Some guys playing with the paving on the road bridge but that could be unrelated.

 

[Grumpy]

Drove past this morning. Work seems to have started. Approach/car park area boarded off, site cabins/portaloos installed, at least one digger on site and men with yellow jackets wandering around.