Portishead Line

[tiptoptaff]

One assumes the Quays Road location for the station would be the Bristol side of the road - is there enough space to build a laregish carpark to serve the station as a P&R? Possibly on the old alignment on the other side of the road?

 

[pdeaves]

One assumes the Quays Road location for the station would be the Bristol side of the road - is there enough space to build a laregish carpark to serve the station as a P&R? Possibly on the old alignment on the other side of the road?

The station is planned to straddle the current Quays Road, that would have a diversionary wiggle westwards slightly. The car park would be on the remaining old formation.

 

[HSTFan57]

While I'm delighted to see the Portishead branch scheme moving forward, I can't help thinking it's a lot of money. For example, nearby Charfield could have 23 new stations for that money, based on a finger-in-the-air cost of £5million for a small rural station. Looking at the map, there seem to be plenty of gaps of at least 10 miles on existing lines where new small rural stations would be desirable.

 

[DH1Commuter]

True, but the Portishead plan potentially moves a lot of people, daily, from a decent-sized town into a city employment centre, cutting commuting times and hopefully a degree of traffic congestion. IIRC the BCR for this was one of the better ones and it should probably have been done years ago.

 

[Lucan]

While I'm delighted to see the Portishead branch scheme moving forward, I can't help thinking it's a lot of money. For example, nearby Charfield could have 23 new stations for that money

Charfield is just a rural village (albeit with the small town of Wotton-under-Edge nearby), while Portishead is a large dormitory town with a massive daily flow of commuters in and out of Bristol. I see long traffic jams along the M5 back over the Avon bridge waiting to turn off at J19 into Portishead in the evening rush hour, when I sometime pass at that time. I wonder what the societal and environmental cost of that is.

Portishead is already connected by the freight railway. If the powers that be (government, councils etc) cannot put a passenger service of some sort on it real soon now (anything would be better than nothing as a start), I cannot take their posturing about saving the environment very seriously.