New station in Bristol

[Bungle965]

From BBC article

A new railway station for one of Bristol's main park-and-ride sites has been announced by the region's new metro mayor.
A range of transport plans were approved at the first meeting of the West of England Joint Committee.
More than £10m will be spent on walking and cycling links, public spaces, transport and road safety.
Mayor Tim Bowles claimed the projects "add up to deliver a better connected region".
Elected last month, Mr Bowles said the region could now be "much more ambitious" when it came to transport, house building, business and jobs.
Among his key announcements were:
£2.8m to speed up work on the Bromley Heath Viaduct in South Gloucestershire
£2.2m towards a new single-platform rail station next to the park-and-ride at Portway, Bristol on the Severn Beach Line
£1.8m to relocate a coach park in Bath from Bath Quays North to Odd Down Park and Ride
£800,000 to improve access facilities and drop-off points to the, as yet unbuilt, Bristol Arena
£500,000 for pedestrian and cycling routes through the centre of Weston-super-Mare

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-40433015
One would guess that the station will be called Bristol Portway, hopefully there will be no confusion with Bristol Parkway
Sam

 

[NorthernSpirit]

I'm guessing that the station would just be called Portway or Portway Park & Ride.

 

[MarkyT]

An unusual choice. I'm not convinced many potential passengers will choose to pay extra to catch a very sporadic and irregular train service from that site, typically 'about every 45 minutes' but more like hourly later in the evening, when the existing P&R bus is supposed to run every 12 to 15 minutes, goes directly to the city centre rather than skirting around it to Temple Meads and presumably has its fare bundled in with the parking charge. I hope this isn't some kind of substitute scheme in place of properly funding the Portishead line opening, which has been going through some technical and funding difficulties lately. Also it's only about half a mile from Shirehampton. Will that remain?

 

[TheNewNo2]

They've been talking about opening a station at Portway Park & Ride for at least 10 years now. It won't happen.

 

[Hellzapoppin]

They've been talking about opening a station at Portway Park & Ride for at least 10 years now. It won't happen.

Bet it does

 

[bluenoxid]

Is anyone able to advise who is making up the £400k funding gap between the £2.2m mentioned above and £2.6m cost.

 

[HowardGWR]

An unusual choice. I'm not convinced many potential passengers will choose to pay extra to catch a very sporadic and irregular train service from that site, typically 'about every 45 minutes' but more like hourly later in the evening, when the existing P&R bus is supposed to run every 12 to 15 minutes, goes directly to the city centre rather than skirting around it to Temple Meads and presumably has its fare bundled in with the parking charge. I hope this isn't some kind of substitute scheme in place of properly funding the Portishead line opening, which has been going through some technical and funding difficulties lately. Also it's only about half a mile from Shirehampton. Will that remain?

I see your point. If, going eastwards, if the line swerved over to the Portway just past Sea Mills and then tram-trained into central Bristol, it would be a tremendous success. In such an event, I think Shirehampton station could be OK, as people in the Shirehampton village would conveniently cycle down to their station. Perhaps some do now, but they must be working in Clifton or somewhere up there. You have to know the geography of Bristol to understand my points here. In Bristol, you either live 'up' or 'down' and shuffle between the two.

 

[Mojo]

They've been talking about opening a station at Portway Park & Ride for at least 10 years now. It won't happen.

The main discussions have been surrounding a low cost platform perhaps as a prototype to bring the construction costs of new heavy rail stations down to a reasonable level, developed under the auspices of community rail. Unfortunately the powers that be have refused to budge on this matter and yet again we see a blank cheque handed to the increasingly inefficient Network Rail to deliver an overpriced station platform at a location very few people asked for one.

 

[Mojo]

An unusual choice. I'm not convinced many potential passengers will choose to pay extra to catch a very sporadic and irregular train service from that site, typically 'about every 45 minutes' but more like hourly later in the evening, when the existing P&R bus is supposed to run every 12 to 15 minutes, goes directly to the city centre rather than skirting around it to Temple Meads and presumably has its fare bundled in with the parking charge. I hope this isn't some kind of substitute scheme in place of properly funding the Portishead line opening, which has been going through some technical and funding difficulties lately. Also it's only about half a mile from Shirehampton. Will that remain?

Unlike certain other locations, Bristol Park and Ride locations offer free car parking, with the fare payable to the bus driver.

The main purpose of this is actually to offer access to Clifton and other surrounding areas where parking is difficult (a P&R route to Clifton operated for a short period of time but was ditched owing to lack of interest).

The Portishead line opening is still being progressed under the MetroWest scheme, and is not affected by this.

 

[Townsend Hook]

I'm guessing that the station would just be called Portway or Portway Park & Ride.

Portway Parkway has a nice ring to it

 

[edwin_m]

(a P&R route to Clifton operated for a short period of time but was ditched owing to lack of interest).

If they can't make a bus work between the same places, how do they justify building a station?

 

[D6975]

If they can't make a bus work between the same places, how do they justify building a station?

In a word TRAFFIC, Trains on the beach line don't get stuck in traffic jams, a bus doing the same trip would.

I live in Bristol. I know how bad the traffic can be, on routes without a bus lane it's quicker to walk than catch the bus along some roads during peak hours, it's that bad.
When I lived in St George, walking down to Lawrence Hill station was way quicker than catching the bus in the morning.

 

[JohnRegular]

I hope they consider building a second platform and doubling the track, or at least making passive provision for it later on. The Severn Beach line is well used in my experience, and redoubling of at least some of the route (and potentially electrification) in the future to provide better frequencies should be on the cards, especially with this new station increasing demand.

Of course, I would imagine there are also capacity constraints between Temple Meads and Narroways Jn...

 

[geoffk]

Planning permission for the new station has been granted by Bristol City Council