Stalybridge Station car parking

[TBirdFrank]

As anyone who uses this station knows, FTPE provide only some 15 or so parking spaces. Tameside Council recently surfaced a well known bomb site opposite and now charge £1 per day for parking for - at a guess around 20 spaces.

Probably around a further 50 spaces exist on nearby streets and even on open space land at the entrance to nearby industrial estates such is the pressure on road rail interchange at this location.

I got the very last space here at 07.15 on Monday so the demand is self evident.

Unbelievably Tameside Council now wish to bar parking on all facilities, off street and on thus leaving the totally oversubscribed 35 spaces as the sole facility for park and ride into the future.

Are they barking mad or what??? The consultation closes tomorrow 25th Feb 2016

Please make your feelings known to :- 'trafficoperations@tameside.gov.uk'

This is my submission as the matter goes well beyond just this location

I have just found out about the mean spirited proposal by Tameside MBC to further limit the opportunity for car drivers to change their mode of transport to the train – private to public transport which I believe is a main plank of public policy and particularly TfGM of whom TMBC is a full partner.

I personally made a site of some five acres available to the rail industry and GMPTE alongside Guide Bridge station a mere twenty years ago with the potential for some 450 car parking spaces, a motel and car servicing all within a third of a mile from J23 of the M60 – before it opened – but the PTE, Council and the rail industry were completely blind to it – only latterly converting somewhat less than a third of the available land over to car park use some two years ago.

Quick off the mark these local planners around here – and their guiding councillors!

This week on the morning of the 22nd I needed to go to York from Stalybridge – at 07.16 I got the last unofficial car parking space on the mud near the fire station – some twenty first century interchange that is – totally oversubscribed a clear hour before rush hour reaches its peak.

The demand for a car to rail interchange here, as right across Greater Manchester is totally oversubscribed. Local Authority planners from all fields pay lip service to this need but do absolutely nothing to achieve it – then this sort of nonsense appears reducing and limiting the facilities that do exist.

Whichever clown in the Council dreamt this up should be made to try to park and ride from Stalybridge anytime in the normal working day. He will then perhaps understand the nonsense which we are all enduring.

The council needs to sit down with TfGM Network Rail and the TOCs serving this area and work up car / bus / rail interchanges wherever they are possible right across the borough. They also need to work with such as High Peak about the fifty year absence of park and ride to serve Glossop at Gamesley which could reduce the congestion through Broadbottom and Mottram Moor, morning and evening.

There’s only eighty acres waiting to be a park and ride at Dinting Old!

If the council is unaware of locations of potential park and rides I am perfectly happy to show them.

 

[charley_17/7]

I used to live in Hollingworth, ended up moving away because it was impossible to get anywhere (work, school, shops) on time using public transport. The area does not lend itself to cycling either, well before electric bicycles came along.

IMO, there is no need to build a bypass around Mottram, or any other of the Longdendale and Glossopdale villages.

Most peak time congestion occurs due to single-car occupants travelling towards Manchester from Glossop, which then interact with the Woodhead Pass traffic at the Gun Inn lights. Removing that volume would make a huge difference, combined with a weight limit on Nine Holes Bridge at Torside, would remove the majority of the problems in this area.

It took from 1965 to 1978 (13 years) from the first house being built at Hattersley to the first train picking up passengers. Gamesley has been waiting even longer!

Perhaps Tameside Council think motorists should drive further to Ashton Moss to pick up the (beloved) Metrolink?

 

[JohnB57]

We use Stalybridge occasionally as it's a more cost effective way for us to get to Liverpool and can verify that it's not easy to park.

Councils often seem intent on making it much more difficult, rather than much easier, to make journeys by public transport. In order to get to Huddersfield station for example, it's now necessary to avoid a number of camera controlled Bus Gates, which are designed to prevent delays to buses but which, of course, also have the effect of moving congestion elsewhere and/or, resulting in people choosing to make their whole journey by car.

It's an extension of the logic that is killing town centre trade - that banning cars must force people onto public transport. It doesn't. In fact, it just makes people go somewhere else - Meadowhall, White Rose, Trafford, etc. A walk round Huddersfield town centre is quite a depressing experience.

We need a more enlightened approach to multi modal journeys and I'm afraid that Tameside and Kirklees are typical of the opposite.

 

[keith1879]

As anyone who uses this station knows, FTPE provide only some 15 or so parking spaces. Tameside Council recently surfaced a well known bomb site opposite and now charge £1 per day for parking for - at a guess around 20 spaces.

Probably around a further 50 spaces exist on nearby streets and even on open space land at the entrance to nearby industrial estates such is the pressure on road rail interchange at this location.

I got the very last space here at 07.15 on Monday so the demand is self evident.

Unbelievably Tameside Council now wish to bar parking on all facilities, off street and on thus leaving the totally oversubscribed 35 spaces as the sole facility for park and ride into the future.

Are they barking mad or what??? The consultation closes tomorrow 25th Feb 2016

Please make your feelings known to :- 'trafficoperations@tameside.gov.uk'

This is my submission as the matter goes well beyond just this location

Hi Frank .... Can you post a link to this proposal please - I too would like to contribute an opinion having been a very regular user there in the past.

 

[johnnychips]

I used to live in Hollingworth, ended up moving away because it was impossible to get anywhere (work, school, shops) on time using public transport. The area does not lend itself to cycling either, well before electric bicycles came along.

IMO, there is no need to build a bypass around Mottram, or any other of the Longdendale and Glossopdale villages.

Most peak time congestion occurs due to single-car occupants travelling towards Manchester from Glossop, which then interact with the Woodhead Pass traffic at the Gun Inn lights. Removing that volume would make a huge difference, combined with a weight limit on Nine Holes Bridge at Torside, would remove the majority of the problems in this area.

?

How would you remove that volume?

 

[BurtonM]

Fellow Stalybridge commuter here, albeit a cyclist.
Stalybridge is a woeful mess for parking.
The car park across the road is always full unless it's after about 6pm, well I say full, the electric car space is always empty.
The station refurbishment a few years ago reduced the amount of parking available too, the station went from having 10-15 spaces in front of it (not including the buffet bar road) to about 8, 3 of which are disabled, and a further 2 of which will be taken up by staff cars as there's only one staff parking space for the whole station (which has at least 4 staff, probably 5).
Also, the pick up/drop off is terrible as it's only 3 spaces long, and every rush hour it spills out into the road. The little loop is always clogged up with people waiting to pick someone up or taxi drivers.
Commuters just park wherever they can in Stalybridge that isn't pay and display or on a 1 hour restriction (and that's not many places).
I appreciate that there isn't really space for much of a car park as things go, but better use of the space would go a long way.

Some of the land on the other side of the railway viaduct which has a couple of takeaways and a little hardware shop on it is subject to a CPO at the moment (the hardware store has a notice saying it closes permanently after Easter weekend), and there've been various rumours going round the town about what it's for. One was Tesco but I'm not sure how likely that is. Car parking would be nice (ha!).

 

[Buspilot]

When I used to stay in Stalybridge with my aunt and wished to go anywhere by train, it was necessary to get a taxi to and from the station as there was no where to park.

What TMBC are now proposing is simply madness. Mind you from what I am told and read these days is that all that comes out of the council chambers these days has no substance or sense. Progress? What progress? Locked in the dark ages.