Stratford (Upon Avon) Parkway

[jimm]

Tickets were sorted out on arrival, but honestly we could of travelled between the 2 stations without tickets and no one would of been any wiser! Regarding the ticket machine when i spoke to the gent of the phone at LM i did say it was a pretty poor show that there was only one machine, i did scour the station for another,but there wasn't one! And just for reference (unless they are all like it!) the machine only accepts card payments and nothing else, i am sure the ones at VT stations allow you to use cash!

Regarding the footbridge, i said a few posts back i thought it looked pretty long, and i've got to say its not too bad at all,tis easy getting up,over and down again

a. It's could have and would have

b. If the TVM took cash, it wouldn't last five minutes before someone turned up with a crowbar to empty it - same as at other unstaffed stations, which is why they only take cards these days after TOCs learned the hard way.

c. The station isn't intended for people travelling to the centre of Stratford, because right next to the station is the rather older Bishopton bus park-and-ride, with a bus every 15 minutes which delivers you right into the town centre, unlike the town railway station. Parkway always was aimed at passengers heading to Birmingham and other places further afield, because of the difficulty getting to the town station due to traffic congestion at busy times and the limited car parking available there.

d. why on earth would there be a gateline at a station where for large parts of the day there is one train in and one out each hour?

 

[edwin_m]

It gets round DDA compliance without the whole life costs of providing lifts!

Lifts are actually cheaper. A ramped footbridge is around £1m and lifts are about £200k each IIRC. Lifts would also be less conspicuous than those ramps.

However lifts aren't usually installed at unstaffed stations because in the event of failure it could be a long time before assistance arrives.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Lifts are actually cheaper. A ramped footbridge is around £1m and lifts are about £200k each IIRC. Lifts would also be less conspicuous than those ramps.

However lifts aren't usually installed at unstaffed stations because in the event of failure it could be a long time before assistance arrives.

I'm quite surprised by those figures as I'd have expected a lift to be miles more complex to build than a ramp. But *if* they are true, then installing lifts instead of the ramp would be 2 * £200K. And I'm guessing you need to add the cost of a connecting bridge between them. Say £200K for a total of £600K. That would save £400K relative to building ramps, which would be enough to pay for someone on a professional salary to staff the station 8 hours a day for about 10 years! Your figures make building ramps and forcing everyone to walk a quarter of a km just to cross the tracks seem not very worth the cost!

Pursuing this further, I'm guessing and doing this with no inside knowledge, but presumably if a lift fails, the assistance that is required would be a professional lift engineer, not a ticket collector! I rather doubt that Network Rail keeps a lift engineer full time posted at every staffed station with a lift. So does the station being unstaffed really make that much of a difference to callout times?

I'm also baffled at how a ramped footbridge could come to £1m???? You could over a dozen complete houses for that price! Is that figure really true?

 

[Cherry_Picker]

Railway prices are artificially high for a number of reasons, but that is for a different thread.

Lifts are expensive though. When they remodelled Stratford upon Avon station a couple of years ago they made it so that trains could arrive directly into platforms 2 & 3 directly from the main line instead of having to shunt into there from platform 1. Still they didn't install a lift to the island that platforms 2 & 3 are on despite extensively refurbishing the overbridge.

 

[edwin_m]

I'm quite surprised by those figures as I'd have expected a lift to be miles more complex to build than a ramp. But *if* they are true, then installing lifts instead of the ramp would be 2 * £200K. And I'm guessing you need to add the cost of a connecting bridge between them. Say £200K for a total of £600K. That would save £400K relative to building ramps, which would be enough to pay for someone on a professional salary to staff the station 8 hours a day for about 10 years! Your figures make building ramps and forcing everyone to walk a quarter of a km just to cross the tracks seem not very worth the cost!

Pursuing this further, I'm guessing and doing this with no inside knowledge, but presumably if a lift fails, the assistance that is required would be a professional lift engineer, not a ticket collector! I rather doubt that Network Rail keeps a lift engineer full time posted at every staffed station with a lift. So does the station being unstaffed really make that much of a difference to callout times?

I'm also baffled at how a ramped footbridge could come to £1m???? You could over a dozen complete houses for that price! Is that figure really true?

Interesting point about the staffing, though the station would probably have to be staffed more than eight hours a day which might swing the cost the other way. IIRC you need about 5 people to provide a 24-hour presence in which case the £400k wouldn't last more than a couple of years.

Local staff can be trained to free a passenger trapped in a lift, though this does of course carry a cost and a liability for the station operator which they might not wish to take on. There is also the cost of alternative arrangements if the lift is out of use.

I've just checked with some work we did recently and the costs I quoted are similar to the rates in that job which came from Spon's rates book. Doing things like bridges on a live railway are always a lot more expensive than on a building site, because of the restrictions on working hours and the need for specially trained staff. However I did read somewhere that Network Rail has reduced the cost of footbridges by buying standard designs in bulk.

 

[barbette165]

There are plans to add a DDA bridge with lifts to Stratford town station within the next year.

This is from ealier this year (the heritage design has been selected)
http://www.warwickshire.gov.uk/Web/corporate/wccweb.nsf/Links/315714A8AE7DE87480257B03003E3905/$file/Stratford+AFA+DISPLAY+FINAL+130130.pdf

The cost in the link is estimated at £1.26M - so considerably more that 200k per lift - although if the consultancy services, external structures, cross bridge, emergency stairs and the need for 'walk-through' lifts (i.e. doors on both sides of the lift cabin) are stripped out, then maybe something near that figure could be achieved.

At the time the existing bridge was refurbished they said that as the existing station and bridge were listed, they could not easily add lifts to the existing bridge.

 

[pt_mad]

Interesting point about the staffing, though the station would probably have to be staffed more than eight hours a day which might swing the cost the other way. IIRC you need about 5 people to provide a 24-hour presence in which case the £400k wouldn't last more than a couple of years.

But why would you need a 24 hour presence?

 

[edwin_m]

But why would you need a 24 hour presence?

You wouldn't unless the station is open 24 hours. But I'm sure that most passengers would expect someone to be around a lot longer than 8 hours, and preferably the whole time the station is open, if there was a risk of them getting stuck in a lift.

 

[MidnightFlyer]

d. why on earth would there be a gateline at a station where for large parts of the day there is one train in and one out each hour?

They exist at King's Lynn which by quick reckoning has even less services than Stratford upon Avon, so it isn't an impossibility.

 

[jimm]

They exist at King's Lynn which by quick reckoning has even less services than Stratford upon Avon, so it isn't an impossibility.

Service levels at the two stations are pretty much the same (Kings lynn a couple more trains on weekdays, Stratford a couple more on Saturdays) and their use at Kings Lynn is presumably down to the station being managed by FCC, not because their use actually makes any sense there.

 

[edwin_m]

Kings Lynn being the terminus there are probably many more passengers passing through the gateline than at Stratford Parkway. Also I assume from the above discussion that Stratford Parkway is unstaffed and Kings Lynn is probably staffed.

 

[jimm]

Kings Lynn being the terminus there are probably many more passengers passing through the gateline than at Stratford Parkway. Also I assume from the above discussion that Stratford Parkway is unstaffed and Kings Lynn is probably staffed.

Read the thread more carefully, the original reference to a gateline was about there not being one at the town (and terminus) station in Stratford, not the Parkway, which is indeed unstaffed, as was also noted previously.