Worthless post beeching openings.

[sheff1]

The problem with Liverpool South Parkway is that it is too far away from LJL Airport.

You can't even get a fast train direct to London from there!

Agree with the first point, but it is still a lot quicker for me to get to the airport from Sheffield now South Parkway is open.

I can't imagine many people flying into John Lennon if they want to get to London.

 

[dk1]

One simple answer: Stratford International *laughs to self* really dont understand international . Apart from during the olympics (even then it wasnt the best) its pointless!

To be fair passenger numbers 09-10 to 10-11 jumped from 69,436 to 407,497 which is clearly in the right direction & without International passengers. The opening of the Westfield shopping centre, DLR connection & not least the hugely popular & hugely succesful Olympic Javelin are only seeing growing patronage daily. We must also not forget the TapEast Micro-Brewery directly opposite the station entrance

 

[sheff1]

I am suprised no one has said East Midlands Parkway apart from when a train connects with the Megabusplus service it is deserted. Though the stopping pattern of trains does not help this

Yes, the stopping pattern of the London trains is totally ridiculous.

 

[John55]

A Heathrow style PRT (linking more than just the airport and railway station) is what is needed to boost traffic.

So spend £30+ million to transport people from a car park you cannot park in between 08:30 and 15:00 to the airport terminal where there is plentiful parking. Sounds a really good way to throw money down the drain.

The bus services seem to work quite well when I see them.

It sounds like you've correctly added the interchange figure to the entry/exit figure for rail usage. However, if you were looking at the cost of South Parkway in comparison bus passenger numbers would need to be looked at as well.

Incidentally, 'people' is the wrong term. If I make 10 return journeys to a station per week, I'm still one person.

Indeed I can add two numbers together but that is what 17 years of state education does for you. If you add the bus passenger numbers for us then we can get the fuller picture. For a full analysis it would be necessary to include the park and ride element of the project and the CCTV control room.

I have been there and it has been very quiet for the size of station it is. Is platform 4 in use there yet as well?

The Blackpool terminators use P4 during the day .

The problem with Liverpool South Parkway is that it is too far away from LJL Airport. Its even further away than Garston was!

You can't even get a fast train direct to London from there!

As the crow flies LSP is closer to the terminal at JLA. By road it is the same distance as the choice is to turn left or right at the traffic lights at Horrocks Avenue. The traffic lights being situated on the bridge separating the platforms at Garston and LSP.

Why would anyone want to get a fast train from LSP to London, particularly in the context of airport traffic? If travelling to London, Runcorn is the better choice (and you can leave the car overnight if necessary). The catchment area for Liverpool airport is really north of Birmingham.

I still think Waterloo International is the biggest white elephant, 5 years = 0 passengers.

 

[Metroland]

East Midlands Parkway. It just slows the MML down even more, never seems to have that many people there, doesn't serve the airport (that should have been a spur off the Castle Donnington line), doesn't really serve anything really.

If you want to get on the train in South Nottingham, go to Beeston. If you want to pull off the M1, go to Long Eaton.

One of the shortest 'intercity' journeys has to be Long Eaton - East Midlands Parkway, along with Worcester Shrub Hill to Foregate Street.

If they wanted to blow £26 million, would have preferred to have seen the Leicester - Burton line opened to passengers, or improved local services on the Notts/Derby/Leicester triangle to increase frequency or reduce journey times.

 

[neodoughnut]

STRATFORD INTERNATIONAL

Cost nearly £200 million to build, and they could move the station building itself to be part of Stratford to make interchange and visibility much better (Platform 11/12 at Stratford cross Stratford box).

Even before it was finished, it was not going to receive international services as Eurostar realised it wasn't going to work. There are currently more people using my local station on the GOBLIN that Stratford International!!!!!

Everyone thought things would improve when Stratford International was to receive a link on the DLR! Except that TfL/DFT etc decided instead of extending the pre-existing branch on the west side of Stratford station that runs to Canary Wharf, they would create a new link to Beckton that is already served by the Jubilee line! I highly commuters travelling in from Kent all want to go to Beckton!

As I live next door in Leyton and had been keenly following the development of HS1, it really disappoints me that once again a complete lack of common sense has prevailed.

 

[RichmondCommu]

East Midlands Parkway. It just slows the MML down even more, never seems to have that many people there, doesn't serve the airport (that should have been a spur off the Castle Donnington line), doesn't really serve anything really.

If you want to get on the train in South Nottingham, go to Beeston. If you want to pull off the M1, go to Long Eaton.

One of the shortest 'intercity' journeys has to be Long Eaton - East Midlands Parkway, along with Worcester Shrub Hill to Foregate Street.

If they wanted to blow £26 million, would have preferred to have seen the Leicester - Burton line opened to passengers, or improved local services on the Notts/Derby/Leicester triangle to increase frequency or reduce journey times.

Encouraging customers to head from the M1 to Long Eaton would be an absolute disaster, due to the lack of car parking and the short platforms. On the other hand East Midlands Parkway has the car parks hence the
term 'Parkway'. The location of the station is excellent, it just needs more passengers! Hopefully some tinkering with the timetable will improve things.

 

[LE Greys]

STRATFORD INTERNATIONAL

Cost nearly £200 million to build, and they could move the station building itself to be part of Stratford to make interchange and visibility much better (Platform 11/12 at Stratford cross Stratford box).

Even before it was finished, it was not going to receive international services as Eurostar realised it wasn't going to work. There are currently more people using my local station on the GOBLIN that Stratford International!!!!!

Everyone thought things would improve when Stratford International was to receive a link on the DLR! Except that TfL/DFT etc decided instead of extending the pre-existing branch on the west side of Stratford station that runs to Canary Wharf, they would create a new link to Beckton that is already served by the Jubilee line! I highly commuters travelling in from Kent all want to go to Beckton!

As I live next door in Leyton and had been keenly following the development of HS1, it really disappoints me that once again a complete lack of common sense has prevailed.

That would have been a bit tricky, owing to it terminating at platform level in Stratford Regional (as it is now). It's still a good idea, though.

<EDIT Add to this what Clip said below. /EDIT>

Encouraging customers to head from the M1 to Long Eaton would be an absolute disaster, due to the lack of car parking and the short platforms. On the other hand East Midlands Parkway has the car parks hence the
term 'Parkway'. The location of the station is excellent, it just needs more passengers! Hopefully some tinkering with the timetable will improve things.

I often wonder if EMP is waiting for HS2-NE to reach it. It would provide good regional links without having to bulldoze the Victoria Centre in Nottingham. An unconnected station in the middle of Toton Yard sounds like another Ebbsfleet in the making (now there's another one).

Aren't parkway stations a common theme in this thread? I don't know enough about Tiverton Parkway to comment, though.

 

[Clip]

STRATFORD INTERNATIONAL

Cost nearly £200 million to build, and they could move the station building itself to be part of Stratford to make interchange and visibility much better (Platform 11/12 at Stratford cross Stratford box).

Even before it was finished, it was not going to receive international services as Eurostar realised it wasn't going to work. There are currently more people using my local station on the GOBLIN that Stratford International!!!!!

Everyone thought things would improve when Stratford International was to receive a link on the DLR! Except that TfL/DFT etc decided instead of extending the pre-existing branch on the west side of Stratford station that runs to Canary Wharf, they would create a new link to Beckton that is already served by the Jubilee line! I highly commuters travelling in from Kent all want to go to Beckton!

As I live next door in Leyton and had been keenly following the development of HS1, it really disappoints me that once again a complete lack of common sense has prevailed.

Since when did the Jubilee line serve Beckton? As someone has said they couldnt extened the upper platforms at Stratford regional DLR so this was the only choice. Plus it is another mode of transport for those who use the intermediate stations on the branch to get better connections to where they want to go rather than a bus - it was never all about the International DLR station - though that helped massively during the Olympics - Id say more people are happy with the extension then are not - even if most get off at Stratford.

 

[Techniquest]

Aren't parkway stations a common theme in this thread? I don't know enough about Tiverton Parkway to comment, though.

Tiverton Parkway's always been very well used when I've been there, even in the middle of the day on a Wednesday. To be fair, I suspect that's got a lot to do with it being quite convenient for serving North Devon that's virtually a rail desert.

Now if you could get to Tiverton itself by rail, I bet that would prove a winner on a similar level to Ebbw Vale Parkway.

As for some of the deserted stations mentioned, East Mids Parkway and Liverpool South Parkway have always been virtually dead when I've been there. EMP in particular, there were loads more staff there than just me on the platforms at the time. Felt like you were intruding on a private party, except no-one was drinking or having a good time. Absolutely redonkulous there's not a bus connection to the airport, makes the entire station pointless in my eyes. I'd use EMP to get to the airport if it was there, however I can simply get off at Leicester or Derby and get the rather frequent bus instead.

 

[northwichcat]

Agree with the first point, but it is still a lot quicker for me to get to the airport from Sheffield now South Parkway is open.

Yes South Parkway has certainly made it easier to get to Liverpool Airport from Yorkshire in general. It also makes it easier to connect to the Merseyrail Northern line.

I can't imagine many people flying into John Lennon if they want to get to London.

Indeed. Many of the destinations Easyjet and Ryanair offer from Liverpool are also offered by the same airlines at Luton and Stansted. While Stafford and Runcorn (the other calling points on Liverpool-Londons services) are served by the Liverpool-Birmingham services which call at South Parkway

 

[Metroland]

Encouraging customers to head from the M1 to Long Eaton would be an absolute disaster, due to the lack of car parking and the short platforms. On the other hand East Midlands Parkway has the car parks hence the
term 'Parkway'. The location of the station is excellent, it just needs more passengers! Hopefully some tinkering with the timetable will improve things.

Excellent for car drivers and little else. Hence the reason Nottinghamshire county council, Friends of the Earth and other organisations objected to it.

I don't think the railways should be in the business of creating urban sprawl and stations where you need cars to get to them. We need walkable development and integration which cycling and buses. All seems a bit 60s/70s to me.

As a stop gap Loughborough should have been developed as a junction station and a bus run from there to the Airport. In the longer term, a spur off the freight line at Castle Donnington into the airport, which could have also served the proposed freight terminal.

As for improving the timetable, I dread to think how many HSTs and Meridians are slowing down to pick up/drop off one or two passengers. The fuel/braking penalty alone must make the economics shaky, let alone the overall slowing down of the timetable, usually a the expense of other stations!

For example, we have a bizarre situation where East Midlands parkway, a station in a field, gets double the services to Derby compared to Loughborough, a town of 67,000 full of students and commuters that want to get to the bigger cities!

 

[Wath Yard]

Excellent for car drivers and little else. Hence the reason Nottinghamshire county council, Friends of the Earth and other organisations objected to it.

Hence the word Parkway in the station name. Nottinghamshire County Council and Friends of the Earth probably need to live in the real world. A world where people have cars and like to park them at railway stations.

East Midlands Parkway was always going to have a limited appeal. It's in the middle of nowhere and therefore the number of car parking spaces is a limiting factor, so it isn't that surprising there are few passengers in the middle of the day except for when a Megabus arrives.

As a stop gap Loughborough should have been developed as a junction station and a bus run from there to the Airport. In the longer term, a spur off the freight line at Castle Donnington into the airport, which could have also served the proposed freight terminal.

Just because the station has a similar name to a nearby airport doesn't mean its primary purpose is to serve the airport. It is a parkway in the east midlands, hence East Midlands Parkway.

 

[Buttsy]

What about Watford Stadium and Ram's Line Halt stations?

Of little use when you're an away fan as few trains were ever run on matchdays.

 

[Coolguy22468]

What about Watford Stadium and Ram's Line Halt stations?

Of little use when you're an away fan as few trains were ever run on matchdays.

Ramsline halt was a waste. But then again so is Peartree in the same area.

 

[Metroland]

Hence the word Parkway in the station name. Nottinghamshire County Council and Friends of the Earth probably need to live in the real world. .

No it's called planning. You either plan or a society where you force people to have cars, or you give people options. I'm in the latter camp. Mainly for the reasons forcing people to have cars puts extra costs on people, clogs up the roads, pollutes the earth and makes people fat.

You say yourself East Midlands Parkway was always going to have limited appeal, then why build it?

I'm saying it's an out of date concept.

Why not improve services at nearly towns that have 5 or 6 times the number of passengers instead of forcing people to drive to EMP where there's a better service? For all the 'extra' passengers at EMP, that's nearly been a matched by a drop in passengers at nearby Loughborough.

When the TOCs/NR do these things, it kind of makes a mockery of their 'green credentials' they pretend to have.

If you really wanted to draw people off the road, I'd have put a station at Sandiacre near Toton Yard right next to the M1 and a main East-West road, which is at least in a useful area of Nottingham where people live and put the tram phase 2 terminus there, reopened Ilkeston (I know that's happening now) and run extra services that way.

 

[Robert Taggart]

I was looking at post beeching opening which are now worthless to the rail network. the ones I thought of were.

Sinfin Branch Line, opened in 1978 and closed in 1998 after low passenger usage.

Agreed, but, Peartree station was reopened in connection with this branch and remains open - just - but hardly used.

 

[DavidBrown]

My nomination would be Ivybridge. Opened in 1994, it's a Parkway station in all but name, and is signed as a park and ride service into Plymouth from the A38. However, it sees hardly any trains, is actually several miles from the nearest junction on the A38, and given Plymouth's road network isn't that bad it's actually quicker and easier to drive into the city centre. As a local station serving Ivybridge, it beyond the edge of town and out of reach of most local people, and as a result sees low usage.

 

[Tilly]

Liverpool South Parkway, for local and distance travel has certainly opened up travel options for me.
much easier to change from the Northern line to other services here than change at the centre of Liverpool either by using the wirral line or walking through to Lime Street.
Ok, you cant catch a London service from there but it has opened up a huge range of further travel options and connections instead.
Although it feels empty because of the vast space between platforms, its the toilets you have to watch out for! The self cleaning floors are lethal!!

Tilly

 

[sheff1]

... its the toilets you have to watch out for! The self cleaning floors are lethal!!

Ah, the toilets ... whoever designed those things should be forced to spend a day in them !

My nomination would be Ivybridge. Opened in 1994, it's a Parkway station in all but name, and is signed as a park and ride service into Plymouth from the A38. However, it sees hardly any trains, is actually several miles from the nearest junction on the A38, and given Plymouth's road network isn't that bad it's actually quicker and easier to drive into the city centre.

I am not familiar with Ivybridge, but if a station is going to be signed as a P&R for a city surely it needs at least a half hourly daytime service and ideally more frequent than that.

 

[Coolguy22468]

Ah, the toilets ... whoever designed those things should be forced to spend a day in them !
QUOTE]

I never understood how those toilets work.

 

[button_boxer]

Why not improve services at nearly towns that have 5 or 6 times the number of passengers instead of forcing people to drive to EMP where there's a better service? For all the 'extra' passengers at EMP, that's nearly been a matched by a drop in passengers at nearby Loughborough.

Emerson Park is nowhere near Loughborough

When the TOCs/NR do these things, it kind of makes a mockery of their 'green credentials' they pretend to have.

If you really wanted to draw people off the road, I'd have put a station at Sandiacre near Toton Yard right next to the M1 and a main East-West road, which is at least in a useful area of Nottingham where people live and put the tram phase 2 terminus there, reopened Ilkeston (I know that's happening now) and run extra services that way.

Nice idea, but the trouble is that if EMD were sited north of the junction any London services that were to stop there would have to miss both Derby and Nottingham.

 

[tbtc]

East Midlands Parkway was always going to have limited appeal, then why build it?

I'm saying it's an out of date concept

East Midlands Parkway, for me, shows the problem of infrastructure being sorted by a different organisation to the one providing the trains.

At the moment EMT are running four/ five/ seven coach trains from the East Midlands to London (compared to the nine/ eleven coach ones on the ECML/ WCML).

There's not enough capacity for them to focus on attracting a significant number of people out of their cars to use cheap rail tickets to London.

Nor is there really enough spare capacity on the trains to encourage EMT to stop all trains at East Midlands Parkway to board a "turn up and go" frequency to work in Nottingham etc.

If the MML gets some proper length intercity stock then there'd be a lot more scope to stop more trains at the Parkway to provide an attractive frequency for people working in Nottingham to park there - you could maybe even extend some trains like Skegness/ Worksop/ Mansfield - Nottingham to East Midlands Parkway to allow more connections to London services and to encourage more Nottingham commuters to use the train instead.

Similarly there'd be enough spare seats to allow the TOC to have the kind of cheap fares that would tempt people out of their cars.

In essence, it would be a good idea to build it in ten years time, but it's not working well at the moment for obvious reasons.

 

[Holly]

The problem with Liverpool South Parkway is that it is too far away from LJL Airport. Its even further away than Garston was! You can't even get a fast train direct to London from there!

Liverpool Airport is in an exquisite location for building a dual purpose PRT which would link not just long term car parks, shopping, hotel and LSP railway station. But could also run on an elevated right of way that provides spectacular views of the River and of Speke Hall - as a tourist attraction.

At a quid a ride for four to six people (coin or token operated) it would be more used than a bus that is gratis to use. Libre (free) we need more of; gratis (also means free) we can mange without.

 

[12CSVT]

Ty-Glas. 330 yards (five minutes walk) from an existing station on the same line. I could almost understand if it was built to replace Birchgrove station.

 

[Metroland]

Nice idea, but the trouble is that if EMD were sited north of the junction any London services that were to stop there would have to miss both Derby and Nottingham.

But it would be in a suburb of Nottingham, surrounded by urban development, 7 miles from the city centre and 8 miles from Derby right next to two major roads and at the end of a tram line. As opposed to the middle of nowhere. And I dare say, probably the site of the HS2 station, but we shall find out next month.

 

[Howardh]

Lostock (Parkway) on the outskirts of Bolton was re-opened some 20/30 yrs ago, and up until 4 years ago most trains called there, and the majority of those took you to Piccadilly and on to the airport. The car-park was always full, it seemed.

Now, the station's so popular that the car-park (free) has doubled in size.

Oh, yes, the catch. The number of trains stopping there has vastly reduced - even though most now seem to stop at Buckshaw Parkway, which is nowhere in the middle of nowhere - and those that do stop the majority tend to go to Victoria, none AFAIK to Piccadilly in the evenings.

The excuse seems to be it's something to do with the West Coast main Line. Right, I can see that clearly.

Not.

 

[Coolguy22468]

I think from the tone if this thread that Parkway stations are not a good idea.

 

[MidnightFlyer]

I'd disagree, they are, they just need to be in exactly the right position. Bristol and Southampton Airport Parkways are both quite considerable successes.

 

[Coolguy22468]

I'd disagree, they are, they just need to be in exactly the right position. Bristol and Southampton Airport Parkways are both quite considerable successes.

True.

I still think Teeside Airport was the worst opening.